My Childhood (27 page)

"Why don't you cry?"

I had no desire to cry. It was twilight in the attic, and cold. I shuddered, and the bed shook and creaked; and ever before my eyes stood the old green woman. I pretended to be asleep, and grandmother went away.

Several uneventful days, all alike, flowed by like a thin stream. Mother had gone away somewhere after the betrothal, and the house was oppressively quiet.

One morning grandfather came in with a chisel and began to break away the cement around the attic window-frames which were put in for the winter; then grandmother appeared with a basin of water and a cloth, and grandfather asked softly:

"Well, old woman, what do you think of it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, are you pleased, or what?"

She answered him as she had answered me on the staircase:

"That will do. . . . Hold your tongue!"

The simplest words had a peculiar significance for me now, and I imagined that they concealed something of tremendous import and sorrow of which no one might speak, but of which every one knew.

Carefully taking out the window-frame, grandfather carried it away, and grandmother went to the window and breathed the air. In the garden the starling was calling; the sparrows chirped; the intoxicating odor of the thawing earth floated into the room. The dark blue tiles of the stove seemed to turn pale with confusion; it made one cold to look at them. I climbed down from the bed to the floor.

"Don't go running about with your feet bare," said grandmother.

"I am going into the garden."

"It is not dry enough there yet. Wait a bit!"

But I would not listen to her; in fact the very sight of grown-up people affected me unpleasantly now. In the garden the light green spikes of young grass were already pushing their way through, the buds on the apple trees were swelling and ready to break, the moss on the roof of Petrovna's cottage was very pleasing to the eye in its renewed green; all around were birds, and sounds of joy, and the fresh, fragrant air caused a pleasant sensation of giddiness. By the pit, where Uncle Peter cut his throat, there was long grass-- red, and mixed up with the broken snow. I did not like looking at it; there was nothing spring-like about it. The black chimney-stack reared itself up dejectedly, and the whole pit was an unnecessary eyesore. I was seized with an angry desire to tear up and break off the long grass, to pull the chimney-stack to pieces brick by brick, and get rid of all that useless muck, and to build a clean dwelling for myself in the pit, where I could live all the summer without grown-up people.

I had no sooner thought of it than I set myself to do it, and it immediately diverted my mind from what went on in the house, and kept it occupied for a long time; and although many things occurred to upset me, they became of less importance to me every day.

"What are you sulking about?" mother and grandmother used to ask me; and it made me feel awkward when they asked this question, for I was not angry with them--it was simply that every one in the house had become a stranger to me. At dinner, at evening tea, and supper the old, green woman often appeared --looking just like a rotten paling in an old fence. The eyes seemed to be sewn on her face with invisible threads, and looked as if they would easily roll out of their bony sockets, as she turned them rapidly in every direction, seeing and taking notes of everything--raising them to the ceiling when she talked of God, and looking down her nose when she spoke of household matters. Her eyebrows looked exactly as if they had been cut out of pieces and stuck on. Her large, protruding teeth noiselessly chewed whatever she put in her mouth with a funny curve of her arm, and her little finger stuck out; while the bones about her ears moved like little round balls, and the green hairs on her warts went up and down as if they were creeping along her yellow, wrinkled, disgustingly clean skin.

She was always so very clean--like her son, and it was unpleasant to go near them. The first day she put her dead hand against my lips, it smelled strongly of yellow Kazan soap and incense, and I turned away and ran off. She said to her son very often:

"That boy is greatly in need of discipline; do you understand that, Jenia?"

Inclining his head obediently, he would frown and remain silent. Every one frowned in the presence of the green woman.

I hated the old woman, and her son too, with an intense hatred, and many blows did that feeling cost me. One day at dinner she said, rolling her eyes horribly:

"Oh--Aleshenka, why do you eat in such a hurry, and take such big pieces? Give it up, my dear!"

I took the piece out of my mouth, put it on the fork again, and handed it to her.

"Take it--only it is hot."

Mother took me away from the table, and I was ignominiously banished to the attic, where grandmother joined me, trying to keep her giggling from being heard by placing her hand over her mouth.

"Lor! you are a cheeky young monkey. Bless you!"

It irritated me to see her with her hand over her mouth, so I ran away, climbed on the roof of the house, and sat there a long time by the chimney. Yes, I wanted to be insolent and to use injurious words to them all, and it was hard to fight against this feeling, but it had to be fought against.

One day I covered the chair of my future stepfather with grease, and that of my new grandmother with cherry-gum, and they both stuck to their seats; it was very funny, but when grandfather had hit me, mother came up to me in the attic, and drawing me to her, pressed me against her knees saying:

"Listen now! Why are you so ill-natured? If you only knew how miserable it makes me." And her eyes overflowed with bright tears as she pressed my head against her cheek.

This was very painful; I had rather she had struck me. I told her I would never again be rude to the Maximovs--never again, if only she would not cry.

"There, there!" she said softly. "Only you must not be impudent. Very soon we shall be married, and then we shall go to Moscow; afterwards we shall come back and you will live with us. Eugen Vassilivitch is very kind and clever, and you will get on well with him. You will go to a grammar school, and afterwards you shall be a student--like he is now; then you shall be a doctor--whatever you like. You may study whatever you choose. Now run and play."

These "afterwards" and "thens" one after the other seemed to me like a staircase leading to some place deep down and far away from her, into darkness and solitude
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--a staircase which led to no happiness for me. I had a good mind to say to my mother:

"Please don't get married. I will earn money for your keep."

But somehow the words would not come. Mother always aroused in me many tender thoughts about herself, but I never could make up my mind to tell them to her.

My undertaking in the garden was progressing; I pulled up the long grass, or cut it down with a knife, and I built, with pieces of brick, against the edge of the pit where the earth had fallen away, a broad seat, large enough, in fact, to lie down upon. I took a lot of pieces of colored glass and fragments of broken crockery and stuck them in the chinks between the bricks, and when the sun looked into the pit they all shone with a rainbow effect, like one sees in churches.

"Very well thought out!" said grandfather one day, looking at my work. "Only you have broken off the grass and left the roots. Give me your spade and I will dig them up for you; come, bring it to me!"

I brought him the yellow spade; he spat on his hands, and making a noise like a duck, drove the spade into the earth with his foot.

"Throw away the roots," he said. "Later on I will plant some sunflowers here for you, and some raspberry bushes. That will be nice--very nice!" And then, bending over his spade, he fell into a dead silence.

I looked at him; fine tear-drops were falling fast from his small, intelligent, doglike eyes to the ground.

"What is the matter?"

He shook himself, wiped his face with his palms, and dimly regarded me.

"I was sweating. Look there--what a lot of

Then he began to dig again, and after a time he said abruptly:

"You have done all this for nothing--for nothing, my boy. I am going to sell the house soon. I must sell it before autumn without fail. I want the money for your mother's dowry. That's what it is! I hope she will be happy. God bless her!"

He threw down the spade, and with a gesture of renunciation went behind the washhouse where he had

a forcing-bed, and I began to dig; but almost at once I crushed my toes with the spade.

This prevented me from going to the church with mother when she was married; I could only get as far as the gate, and from there I saw her on Maximov's arm, with her head bowed, carefully setting her feet on the pavement and on the green grass, and stepping over the crevices as if she were walking on sharp nails.

It was a quiet wedding. When they came back from church they drank tea in a depressed manner, and mother changed her dress directly and went to her own room to pack up. My stepfather came and sat beside me, and said:

"I promised to give you some paints, but there are no good ones to be got in this town, and I cannot give my own away; but I will bring you some from Moscow."

"And what shall I do with them?"

"Don't you like drawing?"

"I don't know how to draw."

"Well, I will bring you something else."

Then mother came in.

"We shall soon come back, you know. Your father, there, has to sit for an examination, and when he has finished his studies we shall come back."

I was pleased that they should talk to me like this, as if I were grown-up; but it was very strange to hear that a man with a beard was still learning

"What are you learning?" I asked.

"Surveying," he replied.

I did not trouble to ask what surveying was. The house seemed to be full of a dull quietness; there was a woolly sort of rustling going on, and I wished that the night would make haste and come. Grandfather stood with his back pressed against the stove, gazing out of the window with a frown. The old green woman was helping mother to pack, grumbling and sighing; and grandmother, who had been tipsy since noon, ashamed on that account, had retired to the attic and shut herself up there.

Mother went away early the next morning. She held me in her arms as she took leave of me; lifting me lightly off the ground, and gazing into my eyes with eyes which seemed unfamiliar to me, she said as she kissed me:

"Well--good-by."

"Tell him that he has got to obey me," said grandfather gruffly, looking up at the sky which was still rosy.

"Do what grandfather tells you," said mother, making the sign of the Cross over me.

I expected her to say something else, and I was furious with grandfather because he had prevented her.

They seated themselves in the droshky, and mother was a long time angrily trying to free her skirt which had got caught in something.

"Help her, can't you? Are you blind?" said grandfather to me.

But I could not help--I was too wrapped up in my grief.

Maximov patiently squeezed his long legs, clothed in dark blue trousers, into the droshky, while grandmother put some bundles into his hand. He piled them up on his knees,and keeping them in place with his chin, his white face wrinkled with embarrassment, he drawled: "That's eno--ugh!"

In another droshky sat the old green woman with her eldest son, the officer, who was scratching his beard with his sword handle, and yawning.

"So you are going to the war?" said grandfather.

"I am compelled to go."

"A good thing too! ... we must beat the Turks."

They drove off. Mother turned round several times and waved her handkerchief. Grandmother, dissolved in tears, supporting herself by resting her hand against the wall, also waved her hand. Grandfather wiped away the tears from his eyes and muttered brokenly: "No good--will come--of this."

I sat on the gate-post and watched the droshky jolting up and down--and then they turned the corner and

it seemed as if a door in my heart had been suddenly \ shut and barred. It was very early, the shutters had not been taken from the windows of the houses, the street was empty; I had never seen such an utter absence of life. In the distance the shepherd could be heard playing irritatingly.

"Come in to breakfast," said grandfather, taking me by the shoulder. "It is evident that your lot is to live with me; so you are beginning to leave your mark on me like the striking of a match leaves on a brick."

From morning till night we busied ourselves in the garden; he laid out beds, tied up the raspberry bushes, stripped the lichen off the apple trees, and killed the caterpillars, while I went on building and decorating my dwelling. Grandfather cut off the end of the burnt beam, made sticks out of it, and stuck them in the earth, and I hung my bird-cages on them; then I wove a close netting with the dried grass, and made a canopy over the seat to keep off the sun and the dew. The result was very satisfactory.

"It is very useful," said grandfather, "for you to learn how to make the best of things for yourself."

I attached great importance to his words. Sometimes he lay down on the seat, which I had covered with turf, and taught me, very slowly, as if he had a difficulty in finding words.

"Now you are cut right off from your mother; other children will come to her, and they will be more to her than you are. And grandmother there--she has taken to drink."

He was silent for a long time as if he were listening to something; then again he unwillingly let fall gloomy words:

"This is the second time she has taken to drink; when Michael went for a soldier she started to drink too. And the old fool persuaded me to buy his discharge. . . . He might have turned out quite differently if he had gone for a soldier. . . . Ugh! . . .
You
. . .! I shall be dead soon--that means that you will be left alone ... all on your own ... to earn your living. Do you understand? . . . Good! . . . You must learn to work for yourself . . . and don't give way to others! Live quietly, peaceably-- and uprightly. Listen to what others say, but do what is best for yourself."

All the summer, except, of course, when the weather was bad, I lived in the garden, and on warm nights I even slept out there on a piece of felt which grandmother had made me a present of; not infrequently she slept in the garden herself, and bringing out a bundle of hay, which she spread out close to my couch, she would lie down on it and tell me stories for a long time, interrupting her speech from time to time by irrelevant remarks:

"Look! ... A star fell then! That is some pure soul suffering ... a mother thinking of earth! That means that a good man or woman has just been born."

Or she would point out to me:

"There's a new star appeared; look! It looks like a large eye. . . . Oh, you bright creature of the sky! . . . You holy ornament of God! . . ."

"You will catch cold, you silly woman!" grandfather would growl, "and have an apoplectic fit. Thieves will come and kill you."

Sometimes, when the sun set, rivers of light streamed across the sky, looking as if they were on fire, and red-gold ashes seemed to fall on the velvety-green garden; then everything became perceptibly a shade darker, and seemed to grow larger--to swell, as the warm twilight closed round. Tired of the sun, the leaves drooped, the grass bowed its head; everything seemed to be softer and richer, and gently breathed out various odors as soothing as music. And music there was, too, floating from the camps in the fields, where they were playing spasmodically.

Night came, and with it there came into one's heart something vigorous and fresh, like the loving caress of a mother; the quietness softly smoothed one's heart with its warm, rough hands, and all that ought to be forgotten--all the bitterness, the fine dust of the day-- was washed away. It was enchanting to lie with upturned face watching the stars flaming in the infinite profundity of the sky--a profundity which, as it stretches higher and higher, opens out a new vista of stars; to raise yourself lightly from the ground and-- how strange!--either the earth has grown smaller before your eyes, or you yourself, grown wonderfully big, are being absorbed into your surroundings. It grows darker and quieter every moment, but there is a succession of minute, hardly perceptible, prolonged sounds, and each sound--whether it be a bird singing in its sleep, or a hedgehog running along, or a human voice softly raised somewhere--differs from the sounds of daytime, and has something peculiarly its own, amorously underlying its sensitive quietness.

A harmonium is being played somewhere, a woman's laugh rings out, a sword rattles on the stone flags of the pavement, a dog yelps--but all these sounds are nothing more than the falling of the last leaves of the day which has blossomed and died.

Sometimes in the night a drunken cry would suddenly rise from the field or the street, and the sound of some one running noisily; but this was a common occurrence, and passed unheeded.

Grandmother never slept long, and as she lay with her head resting on her folded arms, she would begin, at the slightest hint, to tell me a story, obviously not caring whether I was listening to her or not. She was always able to choose stories which would make the night still more precious and beautiful to me.

Under the influence of her measured flow of words I insensibly sank into slumber, and awoke with the birds; the sun was looking straight into my eyes, and, warmed by his rays, the morning air flowed softly round us, the leaves of the apple tree were shaking off the dew, the moist green grass looked brighter and fresher than ever, with its newly acquired crystal transparency, and a faint mist floated over it. High up in the sky, so high as to be invisible, a lark sang, and all the colors and sounds produced by the dew evoked a peaceful gladness, and aroused a desire to get up at once and do some work, and to live in amity with all living creatures.

This was the quietest and most contemplative period of my whole life, and it was during this summer that the consciousness of my own strength took root and developed in me. I became shy and unsociable, and when I heard the shouts of the Ovsyanikov children I had no desire to go to them; and when my cousins came, I was more than a little annoyed, and the only feeling they aroused in me was the fear lest they should destroy my structure in the garden--the first work I had ever done by myself.

Grandfather's conversation, drier, more querulous, and more doleful every day, had lost all interest for me. He had taken to quarreling with grandmother frequently, and to turn her out of the house, when she would go either to Uncle Jaakov's or to Uncle Michael's. Once she stayed away for several days and grandfather did all the cooking himself, burned his hands, roared with pain, swore, and smashed the crockery, and developed a noticeable greediness. Sometimes he would come to my hut, make himself comfortable on the turfy seat, and after watching me in silence for some time, would ask abruptly:

"Why are you so quiet?"

"Because I feel like it. Why?"

Then he would begin his sermon:

"We are not gentlefolk. No one takes the trouble to teach us. We have got to find everything out for ourselves. For other folk they write books, and build schools; but no time is wasted on us. We have to make our own way."

And he fell into a brooding silence--sitting motionless, oblivious, till his presence became almost oppressive.

He sold the house in the autumn, and not long before the sale he exclaimed abruptly one morning, over his tea:

"Well, Mother, I have fed and clothed you--fed and clothed you--but the time has come for you to earn your own bread."

Grandmother received this announcement quite calmly, as if she had been expecting it a long time. She reached for her snuff-box in a leisurely manner, charged her spongy nose, and said:

"Well, that's all right! If it is to be like that, so let it be."

Grandfather took two dark rooms in the basement of an old house, at the foot of a small hill.

When we went to this lodging, grandmother took an old bast shoe, put it under the stove, and, squatting on her heels, invoked the house-demon:

"House-demon, family-demon, here is your sledge; come to us in our new home, and bring us good luck."

Grandfather looked in at the window from the yard, crying: "I will make you smart for this, you heretic! You are trying to put me to shame."

"Oie! Take care that you don't bring harm to yourself, Father," said grandmother seriously; but he only raged at her, and forbade her to invoke the housedemon.

The furniture and effects were sold by him to a second-hand dealer who was a Tartar, after three days' bargaining and abuse of each other; and grandmother looked out of the window, sometimes crying and sometimes laughing, and exclaiming under her breath:

"That's right! Drag them about. Smash them."

I was ready to weep myself as I mourned for my garden and my little hut.

We journeyed thither in two carts, and the one wherein I was placed, amongst various utensils, jolted alarmingly, as if it were going to throw me out then and there, with a part of the load. And for two years, till close upon the time of my mother's death, I was dominated with the idea that I had been thrown out somewhere. Soon after the move mother made her appearance, just as grandfather had settled down in his basement, very pale and thin, and with her great eyes strangely brilliant. She stared just as if she were seeing her father and mother and me for the first time-- just stared, and said nothing; while my stepfather moved about the room, whistling softly, and clearing his throat, with his hands behind his back and his fingers twitching.

"Lord! how dreadfully you have grown," said mother to me, pressing her hot hands to my cheeks. She was dressed unattractively in a full brown dress, and she looked very swollen about the stomach.

My stepfather held out his hand to me.

"How do you do, my lad? How are you getting on
^?
" Then sniffing the air, he added: "Do you know it is very damp down here?"

They both looked worn out, as if they had been running for a long time; their clothes were in disorder, and soiled, and all they wanted, they said, was to lie down and rest. As they drank some tea with an air of constraint, grandfather, gazing at the rainwashed windows, asked:

"And so you have lost everything in a fire?"

"Everything!" answered my stepfather in a resolute tone. "We only escaped ourselves by good luck."

"So! ... A fire is no joke."