Previous Story Next Story

Contents


THE DEATH OF SPITBALL THE SPY

It had gotten warm outside while I was busy being sick and spring vacation was just two days away. The first day I came back to school all the kids yelled,

"Hooray! Dennis is back!"

I was glad to be back in class with all the kids again. Katya, Misha and Valera were in their old seats. The potted plants on the windowsills were where they always are, and the blackboard was just as shiny, and our teacher, Raisa Ivanovna, was just as cheerful, and nothing had changed at all. During recess we all walked up and down the hall and laughed a lot. Misha suddenly looked very important and said,

"We're going to have a spring recital."

"We are?"

"Yes! We're going to perform in the assembly hall. And the fourth grade is putting on a play they wrote themselves. It's very interesting."

"Will you do anything, Misha?"

"Wait and see."

I couldn't wait for the day of the recital. I told Mommy all about it.

"I want to do something, too," I said. Mommy smiled.

"What can you do?"

"You know I can sing real loud, can't I? Even if I do have a 'C' in singing."

Mommy opened the wardrobe and spoke from someplace among her dresses, "You can sing some other time. You were sick for so long. You'll be part of the audience this time." She got out of the wardrobe. "Being in the audience is very nice, because you can sit back and watch the performance. Next time you'll be onstage, and the children who are taking part this time will be in the audience. Understand?"

"All right."

The next day I went to the recital. My parents were both working, so I went alone.

Boris Sergeyevich was at the piano. We all took seats up front, and all the grandmothers sat in back. The curtain hadn't gone up yet, so I began eating my apple.

Then the curtain parted and our Young Pioneer leader Lucy appeared. She said in a voice just like a radio announcer's:

"Welcome to our spring recital! Misha Slonov, a first-grade pupil, will recite a poem he wrote himself. Let's give him a hand!"

Everybody clapped and Misha came out. He went straight to the middle of the stage and stopped. He just stood there for a few seconds and then clasped his hands behind him and then stood there like that for a while. Then he put his left foot forward. Everyone was watching him. It was very quiet. Then he put his left foot back in place again and put his right foot forward. Then he began to clear his throat.

"Ahem! Ahem! Ahem!"

"You choke on something, Misha?" I asked.

He glared at me like he'd never seen me before. Then he looked up at the ceiling and said, "A poem.

The years will pass and we'll get old,
We'll be all full of wrinkles.
Good luck to all!
Study well, one and all!

The end." He bowed and came down off the stage. Everybody clapped real hard, because, in the first place, it was a great poem and, in the second place, just think: Misha'd made it up all by himself! That was really something.

Then Lucy came out to announce the next performer. "Valery Tagilov from 1B will now play for us."

Everyone clapped again, still harder than before. Lucy set a chair in the middle of the stage. Then Valery, who's in my class, came onstage, carrying his small accordion. He sat down and put the accordion case under his feet so's they wouldn't dangle.

Then he began to play "The Amur Waves". Everybody listened. I did, too. I kept wondering how he could make his fingers go so fast. I tried to make mine go as fast in the air, but I couldn't. Valery's grandmother had stood up by the wall off to a side when he came on. She was sort of conducting while he played. He played very well and very loudly. I liked it. Suddenly, he got stuck. His fingers stopped moving. He got a little red in the face, but began moving them again, as if he was warming them up. His fingers got as far as a certain spot and then stopped again. You'd think they'd stumbled over something. Then Valery got real red. He started warming up his fingers again, but they looked sort of scared. They probably knew they were going to get stuck again. Just as I was getting pretty bored with it all he reached the place where he'd gotten stuck twice before. This time, though, his grandmother suddenly stretched out her neck, leaned towards the stage and sang:

"The silvery waves, the silvery waves..."

Valery took his cue. His fingers seemed to have jumped over high step. They ran on and on, as fast as could be, right up to the very end of the piece. The applause was really something to remember. His grandmother even shouted: "Bravo!"

Then six girls from 1A and six boys from 1B ran onto the stage. The girls had colored ribbons in their hair, but the boys didn't have on anything special. They were dancing a fast Ukrainian dance and raising a cloud of dust that made me sneeze. After a while Boris Sergeyevich banged hard on the keys and stopped playing.

The boys and girls still went on dancing a while without the music, each doing whatever step he felt like, which made things look exciting. I was going to get up on the stage and join them, but they ran off. Lucy came out again and said,

"There'll be a fifteen-minute intermission, after which the fourth grade will present a play they wrote themselves. It's called 'The Death of Spitball the Spy'."

Chairs began scraping as the audience rose and left. I got my apple out of my pocket and went on eating it.

Lucy was standing nearby, so that when a tall, red-headed girl came running over to her I heard her say,

"What'll we do, Lucy? Yegorov hasn't shown up!"

"What? Who'll ring and shoot then?"

"We've got to find someone else. Right now. Someone with brains. So's we can explain in a hurry what he's supposed to do."

Lucy looked around and noticed me eating my apple. She broke out in a big smile. "Here's Dennis! Just the boy we're looking for. Come over here, Dennis!"

When I went over to them the red-headed girl stared at me and said, "Is he really smart?"

"I think so."

"You'd never say he was."

"Don't worry. I'm real smart," I said.

They both laughed at this, and the red-headed girl led me backstage.

A fourth-grade boy was there. He had on a black suit and his hair had been powdered with chalk dust to make him gray-haired. He was holding a pistol. The boy next to him was pasted on to a fake beard. He had on a pair of blue glasses. He was wearing a plaid raincoat with the collar turned up. Some of the other fourth-graders were holding things. One had a briefcase. A girl in a housecoat and kerchief was holding a broom.

The minute I saw the pistol the boy in the black suit had I said, "Is it real?"

But the red-headed girl interrupted me. "Now, listen closely, Dennis. You're going to stand here in the wings and watch the action. When this boy says, 'You'll never worm this out of me, Spit-ball!' You ring the bell. Understand?" And she handed me a bicycle bell. "You ring this. It's supposed to be a telephone ringing. Then he'll pick up the receiver, talk into the phone and exit. You just stand here and don't say anything. Understand?"

"Sure, that's easy. Now tell me about the gun. Is it real? What make is it?"

"Oh, for goodness sake! Of course it isn't! That's what you're for. You're going to do the shooting. Right here, in the wings. When the boy with the beard is left all alone onstage he'll snatch this folder from the desk and rush to the window. Then this boy will aim the gun at him. That's your cue. You take this little board and slam it as hard as you can against the wooden seat of this chair."

She showed me how to do it. It was great. It really did sound like a gun going off.

"Wow! Then what?"

"That's all. Now you repeat what I said, so I'll know you've got it straight."

I repeated everything she'd said.

"All right. Don't let us down!"

"I won't."

Then the school bell rang.

I put the bicycle bell on the radiator, leaned the board against the chair and peeped out at the audience through a crack in the curtain. I saw Raisa Ivanovna and Lucy taking their seats, and a lot of the other kids, too. I saw the grandmothers filing in. Then somebody's father stood up on a chair in the back row. He had a camera and trained it on the stage. It was much more interesting to be standing on the stage, looking out at them than to be sitting in the audience, looking at the stage.

The noise was dying down. Then the girl who'd brought me backstage ran into the wings and pulled a cord. The curtain parted. She jumped down off the stage.

The boy in the black suit was seated at a desk in the middle of the stage. I knew he had a gun in his pocket. The boy with the fake beard was pacing up and down. He was saying that he'd lived abroad for many years and had now returned. Then he started nagging the boy in the black suit, begging him to show him the plans of the airfield.

The boy in the black suit said, "You'll never worm this out of me, Spitball!"

This was my cue to ring the bell. I put my hand out for it, but the bell wasn't on the radiator. I decided it must have fallen to the floor and bent down to look, but it wasn't there, either. My heart froze. Then I looked at the stage. Nobody was saying anything. At last, the boy in the black suit frowned and repeated,

"No! You'll never worm that out of me, Spitball!"

I was frantic. Where was the bell? It had been there a minute ago. It couldn't have run off by itself. Maybe it was wedged behind the radiator? I crouched down and felt around in the dust there. No luck. What was I to do?

Meanwhile, the bearded boy began wringing his hands and shouting, "This is the fifth time I'm asking you to show me the plans of the airfield!"

Then the boy in the black suit turned to me and shouted, "You'll never worm this out of me, Spitball!" And he shook his fist at me. So did the bearded boy.

I was sure they'd kill me when it was all over. The bell was gone. It had disappeared. Vanished!

Then the boy in the black suit clutched his head. He looked at me. "The telephone'll probably ring now. You'll see. It'll ring now. Right now!" he said like he was about to burst out crying.

I had a brainstorm. I stuck my head out of the wings so that everyone in the audience could see me and said, "Ring! Ring!"

Everybody burst out laughing. The boy in the black suit heaved a sigh of relief. He snatched up the receiver and yelled, "Hello!" Then he mopped his forehead.

Everything went smoothly after that. The boy in the black suit stood up and said to the bearded boy, "I've got to leave for a few minutes, but I'll be right back."

He went off into the wings opposite and stood there. Then the bearded boy tiptoed over to the desk and began rummaging in it. He kept glancing over his shoulder every few seconds. Then he laughed a sneering laugh, snatched a folder from the drawer and ran to the cardboard window pasted on the wall at the back of the stage. Then the boy in the black suit run onstage and aimed his gun at him. I grabbed the board and slammed it down hard on the seat of the chair.

I hadn't noticed the cat that had climbed onto the chair. It yowled, because I'd mashed its tail. There was no sound of a shot. The cat streaked onstage, where the boy in the black suit had lunged at the bearded boy and begun choking him. The cat was trying to escape. While they were wrestling the bearded boy's beard got unstuck and fell off. The cat probably thought it was a mouse. It snatched it up and ran off. When the boy saw he'd lost his beard he stretched out on the floor as if he was dead. The audience roared. Then all the other fourth-grade kids came running onstage. Some were carrying their briefcases. The girl in the housecoat was carrying a broom. They all began shouting.

"What was that shooting?"

"Who was shooting?"

Actually, there hadn't been any shooting, because the cat had ruined everything. But the boy in the black suit said, "I killed Spitball the Spy!"

Then the red-headed girl pulled the cord and the curtain fell. The audience was clapping so hard it hurt my ears. I ran down to the cloakroom, put on my coat and ran home.

Something was knocking against my leg as I ran. I stopped, stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled out the bicycle bell.


 
Previous Story Next Story