OUR FIR-TREE PARTY

Mishka and I had quite an adventure on the eve of the New Year’s holiday. We prepared for the holidays well in advance. We made paper chains and flags and all sorts of decorations for the Fir-Tree. Everything would have been fine if Mishka hadn’t got hold of a book called Popular Chemistry where he read how to make Bengal lights. That started the trouble. For days on end he did nothing but experiment with his Bengal lights—pounding sulfur and sugar, making aluminum shavings, mixing them all together and setting them alight. But nothing came of it all except a lot of smoke and a very nasty smell. The neighbors raised a fuss, but Mishka didn’t give up. He had invited a lot of boys from our class to his New Year’s party and had announced that he would show them a fire-work display.

“I’ll have some marvelous fire-works!” he told them. “They sparkle like diamonds and scatter showers of sparks all around.”

“I wouldn’t boast so much if I were you,” I told him. “You haven’t made any yet. Won’t you look silly when the boys come to your party and there aren’t any fire-works!”

“Oh, but there will be. You’ll see. There’s heaps of time yet.”

On the day before New Year’s Eve he came to my place and said:
“We ought to go for our fir-trees or we’ll be left without any.”

“It’s too late today,” I said. “Let’s go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow we shall have to decorate them.”

“We can do that in the evening. We’ll go for the trees during the day right after school.”

Mishka agreed. We weren’t going to buy our trees in town. We had decided to get them straight from the woods. We were going to Gorelkino where we had spent the summer holidays. Our Aunt Natasha lived there all the year round. Her husband is a forest-warden and he had invited us to come to him for our New Year’s fir-trees.

I had told my mother all about it and she had agreed to let me go. So the next day I called for Mishka right after lunch. He was pounding away at his Bengal lights in a mortar when I came in.

“Look here,” I said. “We’ve got to be going and here you are fussing with your silly fire-works. You should have made them before.”

“I did make one batch, but I must have put too little sulfur in. They won’t burn. All they do is hiss.”

“Well, they won’t burn just now anyway, so you’d better come along.”

“No, I’m sure they’ll burn this time. All they need is a little more sulfur. Let me have that aluminum pot, will you? The one on the window-sill.”

“There isn’t any pot here. There’s only a frying-pan.”

“That’s not a frying-pan. That’s the pot I’ve been using for aluminum shavings. Give it here.”

I handed it to him and he started working on the edge with his file, slicing off shavings.

“So that’s how the pot became a frying-pan?”

“Yes,” said Mishka. “But that’s all right, a frying-pan is also useful.”

“Does your mother think so?”

“She hasn’t seen it yet.”

“Well, she will some time.”

“What of it? I’ll buy her another one when I grow up.”

“She’ll have to wait a long time.”

“Oh, that’s all right. It was an old pot anyway. Besides, the handle was broken off.”

He mixed the aluminum shavings with sulphur and glue until he got a sort of thick paste, which he rolled into small pieces like sausages, stuck them on wires and laid them out on a piece of wood to dry.

“There,” he said. “As soon as they dry they’ll be ready. But I mustn’t let Laddy get at them, or he’ll gobble them up.”

“Go on. Do dogs eat Bengal lights too?”

“I don’t know about other dogs, but Laddy does. Once I left a batch there beside the stove to dry and he chewed them all up. He must have thought they were sweets or something.”

“All right, put them in the oven. It’s warm in there and Laddy won’t be able to get at them.”

“No, that’s no good either. Yesterday I hid them in the oven and Mum came and lighted the stove and they all got burnt to cinders. I’ll put them on top of the cupboard.”

He climbed on a chair and laid the tray with the fire-works on top of the cupboard.

“You know Laddy,” he said, “he’s always grabbing my things. Remember that time he hid my left boot? We couldn’t find it anywhere. I had to wear my valenki until Mum bought me a new pair of boots. It was warm outside already and I went about in those heavy valenki as if I had frozen feet. When I got my new boots I threw away the odd one, because who needs one boot anyway? But after I’d thrown it away I found the other boot. Laddy had hidden it under the kitchen stove. So we had to throw that one away too, because we’d thrown the other one away, see? If we hadn’t thrown it away I’d have an extra pair of boots. That just shows you.”

“Stop jabbering,” I .said, “and let’s go. We’re late as it is.”

Mishka grabbed his coat and an axe and we rushed off to the station. We took the first train to Gorelkino. When we got there we went straight to the forest.

It was quite a dense forest and we had plenty of trees to choose from, but Mishka didn’t like any of them.

“Once I’m here I’m going to get the best fir-tree there is,” he declared, “otherwise there’s no sense in corning all the way out here.”

So we walked quite a long way into the forest.

“We’d better hurry up and cut down our trees,” I said. “It’ll soon be dark.”

“But there aren’t any decent trees,” said Mishka.

“Look,” I said, “there’s a nice one.”

Mishka examined it from all sides. “Not bad, not bad, but I’ve seen better. No, I don’t like it. It’s . . . it’s skimpy.”

“What’s skimpy about it?”

“It isn’t tall enough to begin with. I wouldn’t take a skimpy-looking tree like that for anything.”

We found another tree.

“Lop-sided,” said Mishka.

“What do you mean, lop-sided?”

“Can’t you see the leg’s crooked at the bottom.”

“The what?”

“All right, the trunk then.”

The next tree we examined Mishka didn’t like either. He said it was bald.

“You’re bald yourself. How can a fir-tree be bald!”

“Well, this one is. See how thin it is. Hardly any greenery, only a stick with a few needles on it.”

And so it went on. Finally I lost patience.

“Look here,” I said, “if you go on like this it’ll be midnight before we get our trees.” I chose a nice tree for myself, cut it down and gave the axe to Mishka.

“Now, cut one for yourself and let’s go, or we’ll never get home.”

But Mishka seemed to have made up his mind to search the whole forest. I argued and pleaded with him but nothing helped. At last he found a tree to his liking and cut it down and we set out for the station. We walked and walked but we only went deeper and deeper into the forest.

“Perhaps we’re going in the wrong direction?” said Mishka.

We turned and went the other way. We walked and walked and the woods went on and on. By now it was beginning to get dark. We kept turning this way and that until we saw that we were hopelessly lost.

“It’s all your fault!” I said.

“Why is it my fault? How was I to know it would get dark so soon?”

“If you hadn’t wasted all that time choosing a tree and messing about with your fire-works we’d have been home long ago. Now we’ll have to spend the night here all because of you.”

“Oh no!” said Mishka. “We must get back tonight. The boys are coming.”

Before long it grew quite dark. The moon came out and the black trunks of the trees looked like dark mysterious giants. We began to imagine wolves hiding behind every tree. We were so frightened that we stood still, afraid to move a step further.

“Let’s shout,” Mishka proposed.

“Hallo!” we shouted together.

“Hallo!” the forest answered.

“What’s that?” asked Mishka in a frightened whisper.

“The echo,” I replied and shouted again: “Halloo!”

“Halloo!” the echo answered.

“Perhaps we’d better not shout,” said Mishka.

“Why?”

“The wolves might hear and come after us.”

“I bet there aren’t any wolves around here.”

“But suppose there are. Let’s run away from here.”

I said: “We’d better keep going or we’ll never get out on to the road.”

We set off again. Mishka kept glancing over his shoulder.

“What do people do when they are attacked by wolves?” he asked.

“They shoot at them, I suppose.”

“But suppose they haven’t got a rifle?”

“They throw burning sticks of wood at them.”

“Where do you get them from?”

“You build a fire.”

“Got any matches?”

“No.”

“Can they climb trees?”

“Who?”

“Wolves.”

“Oh, wolves. No, they can’t climb trees.”

“Good, then when they attack us we’ll climb the nearest tree and stay there until morning.”

“Think you could sit on a tree all night?”

“Sure, I could.”

“You’d freeze solid and drop down.”

“It isn’t as cold as all that.”

“You just think it isn’t because we’re moving, but you try sitting on a tree without moving for a long time, you’ll freeze for sure.”

“You can wiggle your legs to keep warm.”

“I can just see you sitting all night on a tree wiggling your legs.”

We pushed on through dense underbrush, stumbling over tree-stumps in the darkness and sinking knee-deep in the snow until we were ready to drop from weariness.

“Let’s throw our trees away,” I suggested.

“I can’t,” said Mishka. “The boys are coming this evening. How can I have a Fir-Tree party without a tree?”

“We’ll be lucky if we get home safely ourselves, let alone worrying about trees.”

Mishka said: “Let’s walk single file. We can take turns breaking the trail.”

We stopped and rested for a while. Then Mishka set off, taking the lead, and I followed behind. After we had gone some distance I stopped for a minute to shift my tree to my other shoulder.

When I looked up again, Mishka was gone. He had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up.

“Mishka! Mishka!” I called.

There was no reply.

“Hey, Mishka! Where are you?”

Silence.

I walked ahead carefully and stopped short at the very brink of a deep gully. Another step and I would have been over the edge. I looked down and saw something dark in the snow.

“Hey, Mishka, is that you?”

“Yes. I must have slipped.”

“Why didn’t you answer when I shouted?”

“I’ve hurt my leg!”

I climbed down into the gully and there was Mishka sitting in the middle of a path at the bottom rubbing his knee.

“What’s wrong?”

“I hit my knee.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like the dickens. I think I’ll sit here for a while.”

“All right, let’s have a rest.”

We sat together on the snow. After a while we began to feel cold.

“We can freeze to death this way,” I said. “We’d better get moving. This path ought to lead us somewhere, either to the station or the village.”

Mishka tried to get up but groaned and sat down again.

“I can’t move,” he said.

“Oh dear, what are we going to do? Climb on to my back and I’ll try to carry you.”

“I’m too heavy.”

“Let’s try.”

Mishka got up and with a lot of puffing and groaning finally climbed on to my back. Golly, he was heavy! I was bent over double.

“All right, let’s go,” said Mishka.

I took a few steps, slipped and went sprawling into the snow.

Mishka let out a yell. “Ow, my leg! Can’t you be more careful!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You shouldn’t have tried carrying me if you couldn’t do it.”

I got very angry. “You make me sick,” I said. “First you waste time fussing with your fire-works, then you spend hours choosing a tree, and now you go and get yourself hurt. We’ll both freeze to death here because of you.”

“You don’t need to stay with me. You can go on by yourself. I know it’s all my fault.”

“How can I leave you here alone? We came together and we’ll go back together. We just have to think of a way out, that’s all.”

“I don’t see what we can do.”

“Suppose we make a sled. We’ve got an axe.”

“How can you make a sled out of an axe?”

“Not out of an axe, silly. We can cut down a tree and make a sled out of that.”

“We haven’t any nails.”

“Wait. Let me think,” I said.

I thought and thought while Mishka sat on the snow beside me. I dragged the fir-tree over to him.

“You better sit on this, you’ll catch cold sitting on the snow.”

He moved on to the tree. Just then I ,had a brilliant idea.

“Mishka,” I said. “The tree will do for a sled.”

“How?”

“You sit on the branches and I’ll pull you along by the trunk. Let’s try it. Hold on.”

I took hold of the trunk and pulled. It worked beautifully. The snow on the road was hard and smooth and the tree slid lightly over it with Mishka riding on it as if it were a sled.

“Wonderful!” I said. “Now you can take the axe.” I tossed him the axe. Mishka settled himself more comfortably and I hauled him along the road. Very soon we came out of the woods and saw lights not far off.

“Mishka,” I cried. “It’s the station!”

Just then we heard a train coming.

“Hurry up, or we’ll miss it,” cried Mishka.

I ran as fast as I could with Mishka behind me yelling:
“Faster! Hurry! We’ll miss the train!”

We reached the station just as the train was pulling in. I bundled Mishka in and jumped on to the step as the train moved off, and pulled the fir-tree in after me. The passengers objected at first to our bringing a prickly tree into a railway carriage.

“Wherever did you get such a bedraggled-looking tree?” someone asked.
But when we told them about our adventure in the woods they all felt sorry for us. One woman sat Mishka down beside her, took his boot off and examined his sore knee.

“It’s nothing serious,” she said. “Only a bruise.” “I thought I’d broken my leg, it hurt so badly,” said Mishka. “Never mind, it’ll mend before you’re wed!” someone said. And everyone laughed.

One old lady gave us a pie each and someone else gave us sweets. We were very glad because we were pretty hungry by this time.

“What shall we do with only one tree between us?” I said.

“Let me have it for this evening,” said Mishka.

“I like that! I dragged it all the way through the woods and hauled you on it besides, and now I’ll be left without any tree at all.”

“I only want it for tonight. You can have it tomorrow.”

“No, I want a tree tonight. Everybody will have one except me.”

“But can’t you understand? The boys are coming tonight. I must have a fir-tree.”

“You’ll have your Bengal lights. The boys won’t miss the tree.”

“I don’t know whether the Bengal lights will work. I’ve tried making them twenty times and nothing happened. Nothing but smoke and a bad smell.”

“Perhaps they’ll work this time.”

“No, I won’t even mention them. Perhaps the boys have forgotten about them.”

“I’m sure they haven’t. You boasted far too much.”

“You see, if I had a tree I could invent some excuse for not having the Bengal lights and get out of it somehow, but I don’t know what to do now.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t give you the tree. It won’t be like New Year without a tree.”

“Oh, be a pal. You’ve got me out of more than one fix, don’t fail me this time.”

“Why must I always be getting you out of fixes?”

“This is positively the last time. I’ll give you anything you want in exchange. You can have my skis or my skates. I’ll give you my magic lantern, my stamp album. You know my things. Take your choice.”

“All right,” I said. “Give me Laddy and you can have the tree.”

Mishka said nothing. He turned away and looked out of the window. Then he looked at me and his eyes were very sad.

“No,” he said. “I can’t let you have Laddy.”

“But you said I could have anything of yours.”

“I forgot about Laddy. I meant any of my things, but Laddy isn’t a thing, he’s alive.”
“But he’s only an ordinary mongrel. It isn’t as if he were any special breed.”

“That isn’t his fault. He loves me just the same. When I’m not home he waits for me, and when I come home he wags his tail and barks with joy. No, I don’t care what happens. The boys can laugh at me as much as they like, but I couldn’t part with Laddy. Not even for a pile of gold.”

“All right,” I said. “You can have the tree for nothing.”

“I don’t want it for nothing. I said you can have anything of mine, and I mean it. Take my magic lantern and all the slides that go with it. You know you always wanted one.”

“No, I don’t want a magic lantern. I said you can have the tree.”

“You went to an awful lot of trouble to get that tree.”

“What of it. I don’t want anything for it.”

“I don’t want to take it for nothing.”

“But it isn’t for nothing,” I said. “We’re friends, and that’s worth a lot more than any magic lantern. The tree belongs to both of us.”

Just then the train pulled in at the terminus. We had arrived. Mishka’s leg had stopped hurting, but he limped a little when we got off the train.

I ran home to tell Mother I was back and then hurried over to Mishka’s place.

The tree already stood in the middle of the room and Mishka was busy painting over the bare spots with green paint.

We hadn’t finished decorating it when the boys began to arrive. They were very much surprised to find that the fir-tree wasn’t ready.

“Fancy inviting people to a Fir-Tree party and not having the tree decorated in time,” they said.

So we told them all that had happened to us that day. Mishka, of course, made it sound more exciting by saying that wolves had attacked us in the forest and we had hidden from them in a tree. But the boys didn’t believe a word of it and they only laughed at us. Mishka was quite huffy at first but then he saw the joke and started laughing himself.

We had the place to ourselves because Mishka’s mother and father had gone to a New Year’s party next door. They had left us a big round cake with jam inside and all sorts of other good things to eat so that we should have a real New Year’s party too. With no grown-ups around the boys went quite wild. You never heard such a row! Mishka made more noise than everybody else put together. Of course I knew why he was doing it. He kept inventing all sorts of games and tricks to keep the boys from remembering about the Bengal lights.

After a while we switched on the coloured lights on the tree. Just then the clock struck twelve.

“Hurrah!” shouted Mishka. “Happy New Year!”

“Hurrah!” shouted the boys. “Happy New Year! Hurrah!”

Mishka had stopped worrying by now and looked very pleased with himself. “Now sit down, everybody,” he said, “and we’ll have some tea and cake!”

“What about the Bengal lights?” someone asked.

“Bengal lights?” Mishka stammered. “They’re not ready.”

The boys fairly howled with disappointment. “Not ready? But you promised us Bengal lights. You fooled us.”

“I didn’t, fellows, honest I didn’t. I made some, but they’re still damp.”

“All right, show them to us if you’ve really got them. They may be dry by now.”

Mishka unwillingly climbed on to a chair and took the tray off the cupboard. He very nearly fell off the chair along with his fireworks. To his surprise they were quite dry.

“There you are!” cried the boys. “They’re as dry as anything. You’ve been pulling our legs.”

“They only look dry,” said Mishka. “They must be quite damp inside. They won’t burn, I tell you.”

“We’ll see about that!”

They grabbed the little sticks and hung them up on the fir-tree.

“Wait, let’s try one first,” pleaded Mishka.

But they wouldn’t listen to him. They got matches and before he could stop them they lighted all the fire-works at once.

There was a terrific hissing and spluttering as if the room was full of snakes. We all jumped back in fright. And then the Bengal lights burst into a bright blaze, sparkling and crackling and sending off .fountains of fiery sparks. It was a real fire-work display! No, it was better than that, it was the Northern Lights! It was like a volcano erupting! It was glorious! The tree glowed and sparkled and poured silver all around it. And Mishka stood there beaming like a newly-polished kettle. At last the lights went out and the room filled with thick suffocating smoke. The boys started sneezing and coughing and rubbing their eyes. We all dashed out into the passage but the smoke came after us. There was a general rush for hats and coats.

“Where are you going?” Mishka cried. “What about tea and cake?”

But the boys coughed so hard they couldn’t speak. They put on their things as fast as they could and went home. I wanted to go too, but Mishka wouldn’t let me.

“Don’t you go at least. Be a pal and stay. We’ll have tea and cake.”

So I stayed. After a while the smoke in the passage cleared, but the room was still black with it. Mishka wetted his handkerchief, tied it over his mouth and nostrils, dashed into the room, snatched up the cake and carried it into the kitchen.

The kettle was just boiling and we sat down to have some tea and cake. It was a very good cake too, with jam inside. True, it did have a sort of smoky taste, but Mishka and I didn’t mind that. We ate up half of it and gave the rest to Laddy.