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We found the umbrellas and drew lots as to who should jump first. It fell to me. I was not particularly frightened. A few trial jumps from the top of a wardrobe had convinced us that an umbrella was as good as a parachute. I climbed up on the window-sill, from there on to the cornice. Down below glimmered a stretch of asphalt, further on the yard was paved with cobble-stones. I saw the round tops of carters’ caps, the bald pate of our yard-porter Vanya, the backs of horses and the tops of the heads of some little girls playing hop-scotch. Istepped off to join them. For a second it seemed as if a strong current of air was holding me up; the next second the yard and all it contained rushed up and struck me on the heels. Something happened to my head and I lost consciousness.

A crowd had gathered round me when Pavlik came dashing down the stairs. With inhuman lack of feeling he did not so much as glance at his injured friend, but seized the umbrellas and, having tested their soundness, went like a shot back up the stairs. The next instant he was lying next to me. His landing was more successful than mine: he came off with only a broken front tooth.

And so I knew that mastering a balancing act with Pavlik as partner would be no joke. This is how the act looked when, after long and merciless training, we felt we could compete with the Austrian juggler.

By command we placed some object on our noses, chins or foreheads. A moment or two and we had found the centere of equilibrium; the object froze in a state of absolute immobility. Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes passed. Our heads were thrown back, our muscles grew numb, but neither of us wanted to be the first to give up.

Mother came home after shopping, laden with purchases. We greeted her without changing our poses. She went into the dark room, changed her clothes, took her work-box out of the wardrobe and sat down to mend or darn something humming to herself as she worked. Then she put the box away and came out to find us just as she had left us.

“The inquisition,” she groaned as she passed us on her way to the kitchen.

A few minutes later she returned carrying a coffee-pot. Nothing had changed.

“Good God! If you could see what you look like! Blooming idiots!You’ll have a stroke!”

And we very well might have. The backs of our heads throbbed as if all the blood was concentrated there. I tried to move Pavlik by reminding him that we hadn’t done our homework and there was that play by Girandoux I borrowed for just one evening and hadn’t begun. I might have been talking to myself. Another twenty minutes went by. It began to look as if death was the only way out.

“Look, I’ll count to three and we’ll quit,” I said.

“Just as you like,” he casually replied.

“One, two, three.”

Release at last. Pavlik’s purpose had not been to beat me in a contest: he had no interest in petty victories like that. He had wanted to teach me endurance.

Our efforts to find ourselves continued. By this time I had begun writing stories and Pavlik was acting in amateur dramatic groups. We made no attempt to join forces; I did not ask Pavlik to collaborate with me and he did not ask me to be his partner. This, no doubt, was because each of us had met his fate, had discovered the one thing hewanted to do in life. We did not admit to ourselves that our finalchoice had been made. Indeed we deceived ourselves, and did it soconvincingly that both of us filed applications to enter medical college, the resort of all those who cannot cope with mathematics and have nofaith in their abilities in the humanities. Only when we became convinced that our application of “hard common sense” was out of place and when the necessity of learning so many things by heart robbed us of any opportunity to devote time to occupations we could not live without did we realize our mistake and corrected it by dropping medicine in the middle of the semester and trying to enter the newly opened Cinema Institute. I passed my entrance exams for the Script Writers Department, though not with flying colors. Pavlik failed his for the Directors Department but six months later was accepted by three institutes: the Theatre Art Institute, which he entered; the same Cinema Institute, just to show them he could; and, to reassure his anxious parents, the History and Archives Institute.”Seems Pavlik is not to be a physician,” sighed his father.”Well. maybe I’ll see his production of Mr. Cabalsky and Lovesome day.”