Music happened for the infant, Pyotr, one morning of blue and gold when he was sitting in the front room, half dressed.  He'd just discovered a crust on the carpet and was taking it under the table to chew on when he heard it passing outside the house.  It bounced joyously through the window and expanded to fill the room in a crescendo of crashing and tinkling as if the great cut glass chandelier were falling to the ground.  The room could not contain it and the walls expanded with sudden elasticity to accommodate the sound.  He was inside the great balloon of music and it saturated him, entering in and filling him up as it had filled the room, until he too was forced to expand and become a part of it. 

Then he realised, sitting with the crust grown soggy in his sweaty hand, that the sound was fading, becoming smaller, moving onwards and he leapt up or was pulled to his feet by invisible fingers and compelled to follow.  He had just time enough to snatch up a whistle he was learning to play.  Then, in a night-shirt and a pair of his mother's boots which had an row of shiny black buttons down the front, he left the house leaving the front door ajar and stumbled frantically desperate to be engulfed, to be once more a part of the globe of sound.  He was chasing, in a whirl of shirt tails, down the cobbled street pursuing the thing that flashed and splintered and regathered between the rows of houses in the sunlight.  He ran spluttering as though the air were viscous, stumbling on unfamiliar stones.  People looked and pointed and laughed but he was oblivious; his only object was to be gathered up again in that first embrace. 

The button boots would not do;  they made his feet heavy and threatened to topple him over, so he sat down and pulled them off.  He arranged them carefully, with the toes together, at the side of the road.  Then he was off, a white flash, his naked feet slapping the smooth cobbles.  As he drew nearer it made his heart thump louder in time with the snare drum and his feet tapped the rhythm of the tambourine.  The bugle reverberated in his tummy and tickled his throat until bubbles of laughter burst out from his lips.

He was at the centre of it, surrounded by black boots and scarlet jackets.  Lost in a forest of legs and the flitting wings of coat tails.  The heels of the boots clicked to the same rhythm.  So although he was lost in a forest, it became a friendly forest.

Until a meaty black-clad leg thrust him aside and he almost fell, to be trampled by the marching feet but was caught up just in time by a strong arm that hauled him waist high, chest high, shoulder high.

"What have we here?"  And the young officer laughed, and sat the child on his shoulder. Pyotr Ilyich gazed around, entranced by the helmets, the faces frowning with concentration as they blasted out the tune on their bugles and flutes, their flailing horns and ranks of drummers shining with sweat as they beat out the rhythm. The young man's whiskers tickled and his glossy hair caught the sunlight.  The stuff of the man's uniform under Pyotr's bare thighs felt wickedly rough.  He kicked his heels against the bright brass buttons and felt the throb of the drums going up his legs, into his spine and pounding in his head.  He lifted his arms into the air and spread his fingers as if he wanted to grasp the future and pull himself forward into its promise.

Then, picking out the rhythm of the marchers on his whistle, he crested the wave of the parade as it flowed down the main street.  A gang of boys sitting in the bare branches of a tree gesticulated madly as the soldiers passed, Pyotr nodded back like the king at the head of his procession of courtiers.  All the time the drums beat a trilling thrum and the bugles and piccolos piped like a furious flock of birds.

The faces of the watching crowd were blurred blotches of pink amid a teeming forest of arms and it seemed to Pyotr that they cheered for him alone, as if he had brought this cavalcade into existence.

Finally, the wave of music poured into a courtyard and with a last surge of energy it beached the men and their instruments.  There was a moment of confused voluble milling during which Pyotr was handed from one shoulder to another and back again, then lowered onto a wooden mounting block before being carried into the officers' mess.

*

He was happy seated on a bench in the crowded room, squashed up between the thighs of two officers.  One of them was stroking Pyotr's head absently.  The air was thick with the smoke of cigarettes and cigars.  On the table a carafe of ruby liquid quivered in the sunlight.  The light and warmth made him drowsy.  He thought he was still being carried through the streets and imagined the roofs of the houses leaning towards him.  He could still feel the throb of the snare drum and sense the high shriek of the piccolo.  The sun was setting light to the soldiers' uniforms.  He was falling but an arm stopped him slipping off the bench.  The reek of tobacco and men's sweat and boot polish pricked him awake. 

A fistful of cherries was thrust at him and crammed into his mouth, so many that the juice ran down his chin.  There was laughter, another hand mopped his lips with a piece of rag.  A face, with a large lumpy nose loomed out of a dark corner...

"Who's this boy then?  Where does he come from?"

"We found him in the street.  He was on his own."

"Just in his shirt?"  said a younger man, pale and pock-marked with a nose like the blunt bone handle of a table knife.  "But what are we going to do with him?"

"Our new mascot!" shouted a fellow with a green cockerel's feather in his hat, "I'm fed up with that goat.  All it does is shit everywhere."

More laughter.  Big, open mouths and large teeth.

"Look at him staring!"  They liked him watching them. 

The sun wobbled in the carafe on the table before him.  Pyotr made a grab for it and someone said:  "He's going for the kir, watch out!"  Pyotr found his hand in the grip of a friendly paw. 

"Oh, give him a little," said the face behind the cockerel's nodding feather.

"Just a sip."  They fed him a spoonful of something that burned like sweet fire all the way down his throat and pooled hotly in his stomach.

The room was furnace-hot,  Pyotr tried to stand up but his legs buckled and seemed to have a fuzzy distance about them as if they were now someone else's.

He leaned back between the legs of the captain, whom the others called Vladimir.   The air swarmed with dust and a strange new smell.  The men's clothes were thick with it and they breathed it out in great acrid clouds.  Pyotr grew heady with it and drowsy, pressed between the warm thighs.  He was yawning and his head was rolling on his shoulders when the door was booted open and a great blast of cool air rushed in.

"Hey Vladimir!  Ninotchka, you know the little the foxy one?  She wants to see you."

"Tell her I'm not fit to be seen."  Vladimir ruffled Pyotr's hair.

"I don't think she'll listen to me.  I'll tell her but, I warn you, she's in a foul mood today."

The door closed again and there was a sound of muted conversation.  Then a woman's high-pitched voice rang out.  There was a scuffle on the other side of the door then it swung open and a shape wavered into view: the tall white spire of a giant flower bud.   The petals unfurled and a woman's face, two dark eyes, a red mouth, emerged.  Her presence created a preternatural icy silence in the sweaty room.

"They told me you'd gone to Moscow."

"Nina,  Ninotchka!"  Vladimir stopped stroking Pyotr's hair and leapt to his feet.

"I came to tell you how much I despise you."  There was longing in her eyes and spiteful sadness in the twist of her mouth. "Don't even talk to me!" 

"Alright!"  Pyotr's officer smiled,  "I won't talk to you, but you'll let me look a little?"

"You…you fiend!  Who is this child?  Is he yours?"

"No, my dearest."

"Don't call me your dearest!  Where did that child come from?"  She kicked aside a little table.  Cockerel feather cackled nervously.  Her eyes were fixed on Pyotr, who was staring at the fur she wore draped around her neck.  The dead face of the little ermine hung over her shoulder and the dark wrinkled sockets of its eyes mesmerised him.

"He's just a boy, a funny little chap we found in the street."

"And what will you do with him?"  She stepped close and put a finger under his chin directing his gaze away from the wizened little face in its cocoon of fur to look into her grey eyes whose pupils reflected the light like polished beads of jet.  Her cold hand curved around his jaw turning him into the light so that his neck muscles were stretched taut.  "Not a very pretty boy."

"But you should hear him play the whistle, Ninotchka."  One of the officers winked and pinched Pyotr on the arm.  "Play a tune for the lady, hey?  A little tune for Nina."

The boy gave a slow thoughtful shake of his head.

She took the whistle, twisted it round between her fingers, pursed her lips and dropped it, so that it clattered away under a chair.

Pyotr looked up into the woman's eyes and watched the pupils contract to tiny black points.   She was used to this game of eyes and could make grown men tremble with her gaze but Pyotr stared back - he would not look away, not Pyotr.

"That child hates me!"  She laughed, tossing her head.  The officers roared, their bloodshot eyes popping.

The captain jumped to his feet.  "Hey, Nina, dance with me!  Play us a tune on that clapped out old balalaika of yours, Krasotkin!"

The captain and Nina began to whirl around the room.  Krasotkin lumbered after them stamping his feet and picking a crazy tune on his instrument.

Pyotr crawled between the legs of the soldiers and retrieved his whistle from under a chair.

"Listen!" he shouted at the top of his voice, piercing through the din,  "Listen to me!

They all turned to stare at the boy who sat red-faced on the floor.

He put the whistle to his lips and started to play the same tune as Krasotkin but in a higher octave.

"Yes, listen to him.  You hear how brilliantly he plays?"

As Krasotkin picked up the melody, the dancers set off again, faster than ever, Nina's red skirt fanned out in the flickering light of the lamps.  The soldiers clapped and shouted.  "Hurrah for Ninotchka!"

Nobody, except Pyotr, noticed the single unsmiling face in the throng of men.  He of the bone-handled nose followed the couple as they careered around the room.  His stare grew blacker and his lips compressed themselves to a tense line.  With each lurch of the dancer's, the man craned further forwards in his eagerness to observe their every movement.  Pyotr's playing on the whistle reached a crescendo with three mighty blasts, like shouts of warning.

A pistol exploded, deafeningly loud within the small room. The music and laughter were extinguished as the glass funnel of a lamp shattered.  All at once there was silence.  The dancers froze.  The smoke from the broken lamp was still spiralling into the gloom.  The tall pale officer, his eyes bulging, stepped forward, grasping a pistol in his white knuckle.

"Yuri?"  The captain let his hand fall from Nina's waist.  "What is it?"

"Yuri, don't do anything stupid,"  Nina put her hands on her hips.

"You think I'll stand and watch the two of you?"  muttered Yuri breathlessly.

Like two inflamed animals, jaws snapping, the two men hurled themselves at each other.  Nina tried to get between them.  "Stop them, they'll kill each other!"

Running feet pummelled the floor, a crowd  burst into the room.  A cacophony of shouting made the metal plates clatter and the glasses on the table trembled.  A bellowing cry was cut short with a second pistol shot.

Out of the indistinctness, the muddle of noise and frantic movement, a fatal stillness settled over the room.  The men drew back soundlessly and in the middle of the floor lay Pytor's captain, his red tunic crumpled and stained.  He lay quite still and a dark shadow crept out from beneath him across the polished boards.  With a faint groan, the figure raised its head and the eyes opened.  The dying man stretched his arm towards the boy; his fingers, white and cold as roots dug in winter, closed on Pyotr's sleeve.  He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but all that came out was a weak cough and a trickle of crimson splashed onto Pyotr's shirt.  Now, the eyes of the captain had the milky stillness of corn porridge congealing on a cold plate.

The boy squirmed away from the grasping hand and a yell burst out of him.  As if released from a spell, the crowd came back to life.  Some of the men began to weep; others beat their hands on their chests.  The tall assassin was thrown to the ground.  One man gave a kick and another stamped on his arm.  Soon they descended on him as dogs set about an injured animal.  Unnoticed, Pyotr escaped through the open door and found himself alone once more in the street.

*

The sun was low in the sky as Pyotr picked his way along the street under the bare twigs of the hawthorn trees.  No one paid him any attention, so he was free to look about him and observe the people: a gang of boys ran past hurling their caps in the air and catching them,  a girl selling loaves of black bread called out in a shrill voice, "Buy my bread, only three kopeks a piece!".  An old man, bent double beneath a load of firewood shuffled along, stopping often and coughing.  Then, as he came level with the boy, he seemed to crumple beneath his load into a crouching position.  Pyotr goggled at his hollowed cheeks and the  bristling tufts of silvery hair that sprouted on his skull.

"Hey, you boy, come here!"  The man's broken voice was surprisingly loud.  "Come here, I say!"

Pyotr shrank back and, as the man made a grab for him, he broke into a run and did not stop until he arrived at the river Neva, where he collapsed panting on the bank near the arc of a bridge beneath which the river flowed.   The oily current that slid smoothly by calmed him by degrees.  The river had its own music: a measured lapping and a soft placid gloop as it curled its tongue round a tree root or formed a little whirlpool.  Pyotr was absorbed into the serene late afternoon scene.  The pale sticks of his legs dangling in the current could have rooted themselves.

Like the sudden flaming of a candle in the gloom, a swan emerged from the dark thicket of willows on the opposite side of the river.  It swam towards Pyotr, arching its neck.  It lowered its scarlet beak into the slick water and lifted it again, dripping with silver and the shreds of weed.  It turned its head this way and that, always keeping the boy in its sights.  It raised its wings higher and higher over its back.  A small breeze played with the feathers making them flutter.  Pyotr was captivated.

As it sailed close, he reached out to touch the blinding white of the feathers and was about to stroke the powerful neck when the bird turned with a hiss.  Its beak opened like a great red wound and Pyotr could see the flickering tongue and the dim receding cavern of its throat.   It lunged for his dimpled toes as they hung, blue, in the current and snapped at them.  Pyotr tried to pull himself back but with one of its great wings it swept him forward and plunged him into the water.  He went under and struggled up shouting.  Down again all was watery silence, then a chaos of white wings and hissing, then the dim brown river sucked him down once more.

In the next moment he felt a strong arm around his chest, dragging him out of the water and setting him on his feet.

"Why it's Pyotr!"  She shooed off the indignant bird,  "You could have drowned, child!"

"Maritza!" 

"What are you doing here, you naughty boy?" 

As she led him home, she told him how the house was in an uproar with half the servants in the house out looking for Pyotr who it was thought had been snatched by gypsies.

"There's my little Pyotr!" said his mother picking him up.  She caressed him for a few moments, then handed him back to the maid, Maritza. 

"Do you know," she said as she adjusted her hat and veil, "I've looked and looked and I cannot find my black boots anywhere!"