all of a sudden and without warning quit school, without saying anything. He would turn up again without warning for a few months on and off. He would come to stay for a while and then he would leave and then we'd never see him again for months on end. In the long vacations he was constantly on the move. He went to Moscow. Then he went to Poland, then to France, then to Berlin. He was a strange fellow in those days. He was always the odd one out in the house. Even then he always had too much of the gypsy in him. He used to stand before the mirror and play the guitar. He was very fond of the Spanish song 'You are a little rosebud of mine' and he would sing that over and over. Even now I can remember the songs he would whistle, and how he would whistle a song he had learnt when he was in a camp for gypsies in Russia. But, of course, it was also the music of gypsy lore he heard in his childhood, the singing of the gypsy songs and the playing of the gypsy violin. 'When he was seven he got to know a Hungarian gypsy by the name of Gedeon Svirka and he went to him to learn to play the violin. From that time he stuck to the violin. I suppose he started playing after that because it was after he met Gedeon Svirka that he was always to be seen standing before the mirror and playing the violin. Gypsy songs have a peculiar power over him. His eyes are always closed, he has a strange expression on his face and when he is not playing he sits and listens to the music in an abstracted sort of way. His face seems somehow blurred and distorted. I don't know whether he understands his music or not. But I am sure that he loves to listen to it. His face always seems somehow dark when he listens. His father made him learn to play by ear because he said he was unable to teach him otherwise. He said that the way young gypsy boys learn to play an instrument is by ear, because they don't have the money to buy a real instrument, as it is the custom in bourgeois families to buy a violin. But the way to learn a violin is to master a few exercises. He didn't explain to him how he intended to make a musician out of him. But at least once every day he has to stand before the mirror and play the same piece he had been playing that morning, just to keep it in his fingers, he said. 'When he was fifteen and living in Odessa, he was sent to a state children's home in Gagarinsky park, near the sea, because his parents were drunkards. At that time, of course, I didn't see him often. It is only through the gossip of the servant girl that I knew something about his life. He was in the Children's Home for two years, but he was often to be seen in Gagarinsky Park in the summer, playing the violin. All the time he was at the Children's Home he used to stand by the window of his room and sigh or whistle tunes. He loved to whistle. He was always telling us he wanted to be a violinist, because all gypsies are born musicians. I used to say that one could only be a musician if one had a proper violin, and besides he had no proper violin. So I didn't consider him very realistic. I said to him: '"You are not a musician yet, anyway. What do you know about music? A real violin doesn't look like that." 'I can never forget that he said to me: '"I can't tell what will happen." 'I asked him what sort of fiddle it was. '"I am not allowed to tell anyone what sort of violin it is." 'I don't know whether he was very sentimental. All the children we met were very sentimental. I remember how he used to tell me of some tragedy he had witnessed. I can't remember exactly what he said or what sort of tragedy it was. But he told me that a beautiful young woman had been drowned in the sea when she went to bathe. 'Later on, when I knew him better and we used to live together in our room, the last two years of my marriage, I used to see all the tragedies that came before my eyes. He was always talking about the sea and how tragic his fates were. And when there were no tragedies he always invented them for himself. He would spend whole days and nights weeping about how unfair life was to him. He would come home from school and start crying and talking about some unhappy event he had witnessed that day, some boy at school whom he had beaten, or the unfairness of life in general. He said that all his life had been unfair to him. 'And the women! The sea used to be bad and cruel to him, but the women were crueller than the sea. He was always to be seen trying to find consolation for his unhappiness in the arms of women. But, of course, it was a sad sight. When he was left alone at home he would go to his room and cry. His father would come in sometimes and stand watching him crying, helplessly, as if he were unable to console him or to help him in any way. His father would always be feeling upset when he saw him crying. One day, when he was in bed, he said to him: '"Why do you love the sea and the women so much?" 'He said that was just the way he felt. He didn't ask him why he felt that way. But he always came out with strange remarks like that. When he came back from boarding-school in Moscow he had a very strange feeling when he saw his room. He had never seen his room before, as they had never lived in the room when they lived together. It was a small, dirty room, but the first time he saw it he felt a kind of peculiar power and energy come over him and his face wore a strange expression. He went up to the mirror and looked at himself, but he never liked the look in his eyes. He didn't feel like looking at the rest of himself. He felt as if he was looking at someone else, but he didn't know who that was. 'I saw him only once more, when he came back from the military academy, about a year before his death. We were at my grandmother's house at the time, and I went to see him for a few days. He had grown very thin and he looked old. He seemed weak and exhausted. But he was also pale and he had the expression of a very tired man. He was silent all the time I was with him. And the poor boy always looked hungry and weak and tired. 'He said he had got into a lot of trouble at the academy and his father had had to come and take him out. He didn't like to say any more about what happened. It was all mixed up in his mind, the sad events he had witnessed and then, just as he was recovering his health and beginning to get well again, all these things occurred. His mother and father had also died in the meantime, so he was left an orphan. He said he was worried about his grandparents and his grandfather especially. He was afraid that his grandfather might die before he had recovered from his illness. The old man had such a strange power over him that he was sure his grandfather could see right into his heart, right to the very core of it, and could see through all his thoughts and actions. He was certain that all his misery and despair was written on his forehead and that was why he felt like a different person when he was with his grandfather. His grandfather was the only person who could help him. 'I used to see him and speak to him every day for a whole week and he never said a word to me about the tragedies that had happened to him. He never spoke of his fates, not even one day. I had never met anyone like him. He would cry, but in an abstract way. He would sometimes speak of his dreams, not that he thought they had any significance but because he was in the habit of asking me to tell him my dreams and I always told them to him in the evening when he would talk for hours in the light of the lamp as the shadows fell and fell. 'When he left, I asked him where he was going. I remembered how angry he had been when I told him that I would give him money and not give him anything to eat. Now he said he was going into the country to see his grandparents. I asked him how many he was. He said he wasn't going there by himself, but with a companion. I said I didn't understand and that I would have to go there to find out more about it. 'He said: '"Oh, I won't go there by myself." 'And the other one, who was with him, said: '"He's been saying for weeks that I'm not allowed to tell anyone about where we are going." 'And they both laughed. It was clear from their laughter that he had tried to keep the fact of their going a secret and from the way they laughed I knew he had been telling me lies. 'It was the first time in my life that I had ever been able to make him angry. He got annoyed with me and I apologized and said I would