baby at the home of the merchant Ahloo shik-Mhanukhee, three masked men knocked
old Shmurt the doorkeeper out and broke down the door to her rooms. While the
girls and her mother cowered in a corner, the three ransacked the place, even
emptying the chamberpots on the floor to determine that nothing was hidden
there. They didn’t find what they were looking for, and one of the frustrated
interlopers knocked out two ofWallu’s teeth in a rage. Masha was thankful,
however, that they did not beat or rape the little girls. That may have been not
so much because of their mercifulness as that the doorkeeper regained
consciousness sooner than they had expected. He began yelling for help, and the
three thugs ran away before the neighbours could gather or the soldiers come.
Eevroen continued to come in drunk late at night. But he spoke very little, just
using the place to eat and sleep. He seldom saw Masha when she was awake. In
fact, he seemed to be doing his best to avoid her. That was fine with her.
6
Several times, both by day and night, Masha felt someone was following her. She
did her best to detect the shadower, but whether she got the feeling by day or
night, she failed to do it. She decided that her nervous state was responsible.
Then the great dog hunt began. Masha thought this was the apex of hysteria and
silliness. But it worried her. After all the poor dogs were gone, what would
next be run down and killed and gutted? To be more precise, who? She hoped that
the who wouldn’t be she.
In the middle of the week of the dog hunt, little Kheem became sick. Masha had