"What could I do? I ran away to Smolensk. And there I had a cousin
who relined saucepans and made tins. Of course, I was glad to work
under him, as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in
rags. . . . I thought I could work by day and study at night and
on Saturdays. And so I did, but the police found out I had no
passport and sent me back by stages to my father. . . ."

Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.

"What was one to do?" he went on, and the more vividly the past
rose up before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became.
"My parents punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a
fanatical old Jew, to be reformed. But I went off at night to Shklov.
And when my uncle tried to catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev;
there I stayed two days and then I went off to Starodub with a
comrade."

Later on he mentioned in his story Gonel, Kiev, Byelaya, Tserkov,
Uman, Balt, Bendery and at last reached Odessa.

"In Odessa I wandered about for a whole week, out of work and hungry,
till I was taken in by some Jews who went about the town buying
second-hand clothes. I knew how to read and write by then, and had
done arithmetic up to fractions, and I wanted to go to study
somewhere, but I had not the means. What was I to do? For six months
I went about Odessa buying old clothes, but the Jews paid me no
wages, the rascals. I resented it and left them. Then I went by
steamer to Perekop."