THE FRUIT THIEVES Max Simov

Reproduction Ⓒ  Elena Figurina

‘The Fruit Thieves is a debut novel by Max Simov. The story, based on Simov's own childhood in the Northern Caucasus, follows nine year old Pasha and his younger sister Sofka on their various childhood escapades, many of which centre around raiding their neighbours' fruit orchards. This is technically forbidden, of course, not to mention a highly risky business but, then again, isn't that part of the appeal? These adventures are a lot of fun to read and had a definite feel of Roald Dahl's 'Boy' to them with the children's high attention to detail and planning of their cohort fruit stealing missions, and the inevitable chaos that often ensued. I found myself fully invested in the characters and particularly enjoyed the children's run ins with their quirky neighbours, many of which made me nostalgic for my own childhood. The rural small-town setting in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains was another delight. Though I am technically older than the target audience for this book, I found great joy in it and loved it so much that I finished it within a day. Max Simov is a wonderful storyteller and I hope to see many more books from him in the future. I also really wish I had a colour kindle so I could do this beautiful cover justice!’

NetGalley review

Synopsys

In the middle of the last century, in a small remote town lost in the foothills of the magnificent Caucasus Mountains, the local children raid their neighbours’ fruit orchards during the summer holidays. The best apples for Pasha, the nine-year old boy, are behind the impenetrable fence of the Glumins, a weird Old-Believer couple who live next door, and in the orchard of a wicked neighbour, Bullin. Bullin is a cruel man who inflicts suffering on animals and deserves to be punished. There are plenty of other orchards where the children of River End Street can satisfy their fruit hunger. The cherries of the old couple living by the riverbank can be reached by climbing up the fence, and it is possible to get away unnoticed. Or is it? Fruit adventures are risky and some end up in near disaster. There are scary stories about fruit thieves who are cruelly punished. Yet Pasha absolutely had to steal some of his neighbours’ tantalising apples. He tried and ended up being caught. But what would the punishment be? Stories about the past are told that tie together the lives of the people in the book, the lives not ordinary but eventful and full of surprises and twists.

The inhabitants of Gorsk are of mixed ethnicity and beliefs and this theme is intertwined with the lives of the main protagonists. The story does not explain that the children's father, although living in the Caucasus, is Ukrainian, but more will be said about him in the follow-up book.

Here are some chapters from the book which I hope the reader will enjoy:

CHAPTER ONE

Forbidden fruit

Pasha Grinev lived with his father, Matvey, and his younger sister, Sonia, in River End, a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Gorsk. A small spa town, Gorsk sat snugly at the foot of the magnificent Caucasus mountains whose white snowy peaks could be seen in the distance all year round. Gorsk was a tiny dot on the map at the southern edge of their big country and the name of the place simply meant ‘mountain town’. Yet Gorsk was famous for its hundreds of spa hotels which were open in all seasons, receiving thousands of visitors who came from all over their big country to breathe the clean mountain air, drink pristine spring water, take hot thermal baths and enjoy relaxing massages. They were convinced that all of this should make them so much healthier and so much stronger.

Gorsk also claimed fame for other things. Its fertile fields and vegetable plots, its beautiful gardens and fruit orchards stretched for many miles out into the valley which eventually met with the foothills of the giant Caucasus mountains. The outskirts of the town were magnificent. To the local people, and especially children, they were the best part of their land. The spring and the autumn were sunny and warm, with carpets of bright wild flowers – orange blue, yellow, – growing in the meadows or on the slopes of Frantiha Mountain. Frantiha was more of a hill than a mountain and yet the local people called it a mountain. A very long time ago, and probably because of the flowers, they had given the mountain the name Frantiha, a coquette, but then they had started burying their dead on its slopes and the coquettish image had been lost. The nearby woods on the edge of the town and around Frantiha were full of wild fruit in late summer and early autumn and local adults and children went foraging in that no-man’s-land. Fruit was there for everyone to take and people just helped themselves to this gift of nature.

Come June, the long school holidays began for the local children. This was when Gorsk’s fruit adventures would also start. The children who lived on the outskirts of Gorsk, unlike those who lived in the town centre, had the splendid world of fruit orchards to explore. The apple trees offered the best treat imaginable – that of a juicy apple, warm from the sun. The early varieties ripen at the end of July and this is when these apples were at their tastiest. You could smell their aroma as soon as you approached the tree. As you dug your teeth into the apple, its juice would squirt out in all directions and cover your nose and cheeks with tiny droplets. Your own orchard might have had delicious apples to offer each season but those of a friend’s family, or the neighbours’, were each child’s dream. Their fruit always looked so much bigger, was so much juicier and aromatic, so much sweeter compared to the fruit in your own orchard, that the desire to get a taste of it turned into a complete obsession. You began devising plans how to get hold of it.

Yes, stealing is bad! We all know. But not fruit. Not for the children of Gorsk. For them it was the usual pastime of their summer holiday. It was part of their growing up. Everywhere you looked there was fruit in abundance. Enough for all. Naturally, adults did not approve of stealing fruit from other people’s orchards. But you could not really imagine any child sitting at home while their friends helped themselves to all sorts of delicious fruit from the orchard next door. They might even be in your own orchard! The orchards around were raided for fun and in reality the damage was negligible.

September was the time to go back to school and the fruit activity became less frequent, but it did not stop completely. September and October produced an abundance of mouth-watering late-season apples that stayed in cool storage the whole winter, either to be eaten or turned into tasty pies. Clusters of green and red apples, high on the tree branches, sparkled invitingly in the autumn sun and the fruit on the trees of the neighbours was naturally the biggest and the most appealing. To climb unnoticed up one of those trees in order to grab a bunch was the skill most prized.

In Gorsk there were also orchards that were well-hidden behind very tall fences and guarded by very fierce dogs. The dogs roamed the domain of their owners and if a stranger dared to peek through a narrow gap in the fence, just out of curiosity, or to admire with envy the most tantalising fruit on earth, the dogs would immediately sense the person on the other side of the fence. They would throw their body against the hard wood of the fence, foaming at the lips and sending the innocent admirer to the other end of the street in a fit of terror, heart pounding.

The Grinevs’ small house was surrounded by a large courtyard with a good-size orchard stretching out at the back of the house. For Pasha the best apples were not in his own orchard but behind the impenetrable fence of the Glumins, the Grinevs’ next-door neighbours on the right. The Glumins’ guard dog, Albert, had sent many innocent passers-by fleeing to the other side of the street, even though they had taken no interest whatsoever in the Glumins’ fruit. Living next door, the Grinev children had won Albert’s trust, so it was not the dog but the fence that stood in their way.

Another impenetrable orchard belonged to Bullin, a man with the most disagreeable character. His orchard was bordering the Grinevs’ at the back. At night he used to let loose his two enormous Alsatian dogs and in the moonlight one could make out the silhouettes of these wolf-like beasts moving among the trees. They made no noise on their patrol but would most certainly devour any living creature that might cross their path. Therefore no child would ever dare to venture into Bullin’s orchard.

In Gorsk there were orchards, not many though, that would not appeal to any child: overgrown with weeds and thorny brambles their neglected fruit trees that had once proudly borne succulent luxurious fruit, had now turned back into wild and shrivelled pathetic shrubs. Their fruit had become bitter and rock-hard, unfit for human consumption. Although no one wanted to raid that kind of orchard for fruit, they nevertheless offered amazing hiding places. There were a couple of such orchards at the railway end of River End, where the Grinev children were seen sometimes playing with their friends. Unlike in some stories, there was no true magic in the children’s lives, but the events that happened to them as they grew up in Gorsk did seem like magic, because children believed in magic and went looking for it every time they stepped out of their front door.

CHAPTER TWO

Paradise apples

The summer was coming to an end with an abundance of apples and pears in the orchards. Pasha stood outside, in the courtyard, with his eyes fixed on the shiny bright fruit on top of the Glumins’ tree nearest to their fence. At this moment there was only one thing on his mind: how to get hold of some of the neighbours’ most tantalising apples.

‘Forbidden fruit’, Pasha heard Grandma muttering sometimes when he or his sister managed to get hold of things they were not supposed to touch. But their neighbours’ gleaming apples sitting on top of the tree in full sun were truly forbidden fruit that he must have.

‘What are you looking at?’ asked his sister, approaching him from behind. He did not even hear her approaching, so absorbed was he in his admiration of the apples.

‘Nothing,’ he quickly turned his gaze away from the apple tree, looking at nowhere in particular.

‘You are scheming, Pash,’ Sofka had the talent of picking clever words that she had heard their grandmother use, though sometimes she got them wrong. Sofka was Sonia’s pet name. Her round pretty face had a halo of curly unruly hair around it and Sofka sounded soft, like her fluffy curls.

‘What do you mean, scheming?’ He pretended to look shocked. But then he looked at her again and thought better of it. Of course, he needed an accomplice.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look up there.’ He pointed his finger in the direction of a cluster of marble-looking apples.

‘What do you see?’ Sofka squinted at him. ‘Are you mad or what? What if the Glumins catch you? I dread to think what they would do to you.’

Pasha knew he had the skill to get the apples but the thought of their weird neighbours gave him the creeps.

His sister was determined to put him off this crazy idea. ‘How do think you will get at those apples? You don’t have wings or a helicopter.’

Expressing doubts about his skill, she only sealed his determination. He said resolutely, ‘I will climb up the fence and reach them from the top.’

‘Never in a million years will you be able to reach those apples. Even from the top of the fence!’ scoffed Sofka, looking at the Glumins’ apples at the top of the tree behind the fence.

‘I have a plan. Don’t you worry! As if I have never fetched apples from higher branches on our trees,’ his tone was boastful and reassuring at the same time.

‘Listen!’ he continued, ‘there are lots of long poles in our shed that father has collected for house repairs. That I know. I will bash a long nail through one of them so that the sharp end sticks out at the other end. And then I will get those apples with the nail. You’ll see.’

All excited about his clever idea he looked at his sister, ‘How do you like my plan?’

Their conversation attracted the attention of Albert, the Glumins’ guard dog, whose white and orange body flickered through the gap in the timber fence. Sofka, spotting the dog, demanded, ‘And when do you think you might be able to do it? You will stick out like a scarecrow sitting on top of that fence. And Albert will go barking mad seeing you up there.’

Pasha replied, ‘Next Sunday morning when the Glumins go to church. Father said he would have to go to work as well. We can do it then. No one will see us.’

‘You can do it! I won’t,’ said Sofka categorically.

‘All right then. I am going for the apples whatever you say! But you will have to keep quiet.’

‘The nail is rusty,’ continued to argue Sofka. ‘The apples will have horrible dirty holes in them,’ she pulled her face. ‘I am not going to eat them.’

‘And who said you are going to get any?’ her brother remarked. She went away in a sulk saying nothing.

Experience had taught her that if her brother got something into his head, there was nothing she could do to persuade him otherwise. Most of the time she was a willing accomplice in his mischief but if the risk was too great she’d rather back out. The apples on the Glumins’ tree looked splendid indeed but the height of the tree, she knew, was well beyond Pasha’s reach. What was he thinking of?

For his part, Pasha was sure that his sister would keep a secret since many secrets had been shared between the two of them. He made his way into the shed to see if he could find a suitable pole. The shed was full of junk and wooden boards of all sizes strewn all over the floor. Shifting all that debris proved to be a laborious task. But he was determined to find what he wanted. There were several poles in the shed but they were either too long or too short. Some were too thick to get a good grip of them. He had to make sure that he would be able to manipulate the stick while getting the apples.

In the end his determination paid off. In the dampest corner of the shed, he found a pole that was about twice his height. He gripped one end to make sure he had a firm hold of it. He decided this was what he needed. If he climbed the fence which stood between the Glumins’ and their own orchards, he should be able to reach the apples without much effort. All that he needed now was a big strong nail. He knew where his father’s toolbox was. He was sure he could find a suitable nail there. It did not take long to find one. A big strong stainless steel nail presented itself before his eyes as he opened the toolbox. A few moments later Sofka could hear a banging noise coming from the shed. This did not sound reassuring to her at all.

But Pasha could not taste any apples from the Glumins’ orchard that autumn because his grandmother fell ill and the Grinevs had to look after her at weekends. By the time she had recovered, the Glumins had harvested their apple crop.

CHAPTER THREE

The Glumin couple

The Glumins were a peculiar old couple. They kept to themselves and were very secretive. No one ever visited them. Nor did they ever leave their house to go and visit any relatives or go on holiday. There were strange rumours spreading among the children of River End about the Glumins, and no one could say who had started these. Pasha’s father told his children not to talk nonsense when they tried to ask him questions about the couple. This, however, did not make the children change their minds or stop them thinking of the Glumin couple as being weird.

The truth was that there was something terrifying about them, especially the old man. It was not so much the way they looked. They looked like many other old people in the town. It was the way they lived, keeping to themselves, not talking to their neighbours in the street, or anyone else. His father had once tried to explain that the Glumin couple, like some other families in their street, belonged to the Old Believers, but that did not make the children think of them any better. The children of River End suspected that the Glumins belonged to some sinister secret sect that was engaged in weird rituals, maybe even animal sacrifice. The sect, they believed, was so secretive that no one would ever find out what was going on.

Pasha and his sister swore that on some occasions they had spied the Glumin couple leaving their house at dusk and heading in the direction of the cemetery on Frantiha mountain. But they could not tell their father about it. He would just tell them off for talking nonsense.

The children did not understand how different the Old Believers were from all the other Russian Christian people. The Grinev family were not religious, except for Grandma’s sister, Aunt Sofia, but she was Russian Orthodox and did not want to talk about the Old Believers. In her eyes, they were all heretics. The grandmother once replied to Pasha’s question about the difference, ‘They cross themselves with two fingers only. In our church people cross themselves with three. Also men must have beards and women always wear headscarves. They just keep to themselves. But they are harmless.’

But Pasha persisted, ‘Why are they so secretive? Old Believers have their own church in town but the doors are always shut. In the Orthodox Church the doors are always open.’

‘Because of their sad fate in history they learned to keep to themselves. Some three hundred years ago Old Believers were killed for their faith. But that was centuries back,’ his grandmother tried to explain.

The family had a small collection of books which Pasha often looked through. He had read some but by no means all. Many of the books were for adults and not very interesting to read. But there were a couple of books with reproductions of old Russian paintings and some caught his attention. One of these reproductions he kept coming back to.

The original painting, he read, was displayed at one of Moscow’s major art galleries and was painted by the 19th-century artist Vassili Surikov. It depicted a three-hundred-year-old Moscow scene which Pasha found rather unsettling. It showed a horse-drawn sledge, sunk in deep snow grooves, carrying a woman chained by a pair of iron shackles. Covered in black clothes and black headdress with a black scarf, she raised the first and second finger of her outstretched right arm pointing high to the sky. The description under the picture explained that the woman on the cart was Boyarina Morozova of the Old Believers’ faith, who was being taken to her place of execution. She had been condemned for refusing to convert to the new faith adopted by the Russian state in the 17th century, the Russian Orthodox faith. Her pale face was turned to the crowd surrounding the sledge and her mad dark eyes communicated an ominous message of God’s wrath.

It seemed that many characters in the scene enjoyed the spectacle but there were also some sad faces. Pasha questioned his father on the subject of the Old Believers, ‘Are they still condemned in our time?’ he once asked after looking at the picture in the book yet again.

‘Certainly not. Nowadays people do not get condemned for their faith. Why do you ask? Is it still about our neighbours? Leave them alone. They are just an old couple.’

‘There seem to be many of them in our town, father. So they did not all die.’

‘True, there are quite a lot of them in our region. When they were forced to convert, many fled Russia and moved with families to provinces. In those days our region did not even belong to Russia so they settled here and survived.’

‘You know that book we have, “The Art of Russia?”’ asked Pasha. ‘There is a picture there about Boyarina Morozova.’

‘Well spotted, son. The poor woman died in a dungeon for her faith. But these things do not happen to the Old Believers any more.’

Something about the picture kept Pasha fascinated. The two young boys on the right looked like they were enjoying the spectacle. One had a broad grin on his face. Why? Pasha imagined himself in their place but with the Glumins in the cart instead of Morozova. Would he laugh running alongside the cart as they were driven to a certain death? Probably not.

He did see the Glumin couple on several occasions walking in the direction of Frantiha mountain and the cemetery but there was probably some simple explanation for that. They probably had a relative buried there. His own mother was buried there and the family regularly visited her grave. There was nothing wrong with visiting the grave of a relative.

Pasha eventually stopped looking at the Glumins with fear or suspicion. Their orchard, on the other hand, had a hypnotic effect on him. With the new autumn crop those apples would start teasing him again.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

How to steal apples

The eventful summer holidays were coming to an end and the Glumins’ ripe apples on top of their tallest tree tormented Pasha. After a week of heavy rain, the sun was shining again and he decided that he must get them! His father had a busy month at work and was in demand at weekends. He took some other days off during the working week in compensation and that suited Pasha very well. He knew that the last Sunday in August his father would be working and he made up his mind to go for the apples then. The Glumins would no doubt be in church.

Sofka was the only obstacle. To his great annoyance, she absolutely refused to take part in his venture and even threatened to tell their father. But Pasha knew she would not dare. He told her there would be no apples for her.

Sunday finally came. Their father left for work as usual and Pasha sat by the window to watch the Glumin couple leaving their house for the church. He saw the couple emerge from their back door, Mrs Glumin leaning on her husband’s right arm. Her husband was taller and slimmer and, unlike her, he stood completely erect. Mrs Glumin, on the other hand, always walked slightly bent. In fact, most of the time Mrs Glumin seemed like any other old woman, going around her usual old woman’s business – weeding her orchard and taking radishes to the market to sell for a few pennies a bunch. She had that eternal smile on her face that, Pasha noticed, most religious people had. But it was her husband who instilled fear in the children.

Mr Glumin had bird-like features. His face was somewhat protruding and his pointed nose had a downward curvature. His very thin lips seemed to curve around his chin, giving the impression of his mouth looking more like a bird’s beak. But it was his eyes that were most peculiar. They were a very cold blue colour and had virtually no black pupils in them. When you looked into his eyes you had the impression that you were staring into some kind of icey-blue void. There was no expression in them. In hot summer, those eyes chilled you to the bone.

Pasha only saw those eyes once or twice when his father stopped the man to inform him that he was going to trim the branches of the old mulberry tree. The tree grew in the corner of the Glumin’s orchard and the branches spilled over the Grinevs’ fence. The man never objected and even suggested that there was no need to ask. And that was it. But those eyes and the nose left a deep impression on Pasha.

That Sunday he saw the couple leaving their house in the care of their dog. But the dog Pasha could handle. As soon as the Glumins disappeared round the corner of the street Pasha sprang to his feet and headed for the shed to fetch his pole with the nail that he had prepared in advance. Back by the fence, he propped up the pole and proceeded to climb the fence. The idea was to sit on top of the fence with his feet resting on the horizontal rail that held the vertical bits together. That should give him enough support to hold the stick firmly with both hands while piercing the apples with the nail. Three or four years of tree-climbing experience made the top of the fence a manageable target.

In a couple of minutes Pasha had mounted the fence and was carefully resting his feet on the ledge of the horizontal wooden rail. Now the Glumins’ apple orchard spread before him in all its splendour. His own courtyard was behind his back. He was only a couple of feet below the height of the treetops. As he looked across the orchard from his vantage position, a warm feeling of great satisfaction and pleasure rose up in his heart. There were row after row of perfectly trimmed apple-trees, densely covered in perfectly shaped apples of three or four varieties. The ones that were nearest to him were the colour of yellow marble and seemed to be the ripest, which was lucky. But there were other kinds that also looked amazingly appealing. They were mostly red with some green in-between and on some the green tint was already turning yellow, giving the apples a golden hue. The thought flashed through his mind that they might be his next adventure.

He also noticed that each tree had a net at the level of the lower branches suspended by ropes from the higher branches. He and Sofka had seen similar nets in Bullin’s orchard. Their own trees did not have any nets, as no-one was bothered about the apples falling to the ground and getting slightly bruised. The Glumins sold their apples in the market so they did not want them to be damaged. The Grinevs did not have that many apple trees. What grew in the orchard the children ate during the apple season. What they managed to harvest lasted them until the New Year.

It was time to get going. Suddenly Sofka’s hysterical voice called out:

‘Pash, get down! I’m terrified!’

At first Sofka had been determined that she would stay inside the house. She completely refused to be part of this business. In her own mind the Glumins’ fence was built like a fortress, beyond reach, and there was no point whatsoever in trying to steal anything from their orchard. Any attempt was doomed to failure. And worst of all, imagine getting caught by the old man. Before you knew it, you’d probably lose an ear, if not both!

When Pasha left the house that morning, she took a book and sat on her bed pretending to read. But her curiosity and worry got the better of her. She went up to their bedroom window to watch Pasha climbing up the fence. As she watched him going up higher and higher, she felt sicker and sicker with worry. What if the couple had left something behind and came back to find him stealing their apples? What if he fell off the fence and injured himself? When she saw him reaching the top she rushed out of the house to demand that he climb down.

‘Keep quiet, you idiot! Other people might hear you. Pass me the stick,’ Pasha ordered.

He would have to turn around and bend down to reach the pole which was propped up against the fence, but since Sofka was on the other side of the fence he might as well ask her.

‘Please, Pash. Climb back down!’ She was pleading.

‘Give me that stick! Do it!’

She realised it was no good arguing. It was probably better to give it to him to avoid the risk of him falling down head first. Reluctantly she got hold of the pole and stretched it up as far as her arms would reach. Pasha grabbed the pole. With no effort, he turned around and sat on top of the fence once again.

All that time, while Pasha was climbing up the fence and arguing with Sofka, the dog was sitting at the bottom, on the other side of the fence, looking up at Pasha with some curiosity.

The first cluster of apples was very close but not close enough to reach with his hands. There were about six apples and, holding the pole half-way along its length, he swung it gently upwards to pierce one of the apples with the nail. Once the nail was safely embedded in the apple, Pasha pulled gently and tried to detach the apple from the tree. But as he pulled, two perfect apples came off together, the second one still attached to the stem. That bonus apple lifted Pasha’s spirits. He brought the stick down and gently pulled the apples off the nail.

‘Sofka, lift your T-shirt and catch the apples,’ he ordered his sister.

Obeying her brother’s orders this time, Sofka lifted the bottom of her T-shirt, stretched it as far as it would go and waited for the apples to drop. There was no longer any point in resisting, since the adventure had gone so far. The two apples landed perfectly in her outstretched T-shirt. She collected them safely and put them gently down near the fence. Five more apples were collected in the same manner and Sofka arranged them all in a neat row on the ground by the bottom edge of the fence.

The easy part of the job was accomplished with some success. Only two apples which Pasha knocked down landed in the net arranged neatly around the bottom branches of the apple tree, which was just below his perch. ‘Let the Glumin have them,’ Pasha thought. The task now was much more challenging. To reach the next-nearest cluster of apples required quite a bit of stretching on Pasha’s part. He now had to stand up with one foot resting on the horizontal wooden rail that held the vertical planks of the fence together. His other foot had to rest on the very top edge of the fence. He knew that his balancing skills were quite good, probably as a result of tree-climbing experience, so he was prepared to take the risk.

‘Hold the pole for me for a sec,’ he asked Sofka. She took it obediently.