My Childhood (6 page)

feet so quickly that they seemed to be stationary; then he stooped to the floor, and spun round and round like a golden swallow, the splendor of his silk blouse shedding an illumination all around, as it quivered and rippled, as if he were alight and floating in the air. He danced unweariedly, oblivious of everything, and it seemed as though, if the door were to open, he would have danced out, down the street, and through the town and away . . . beyond our ken.

"Cross over!" cried Uncle Jaakov, stamping his feet, and giving a piercing whistle; then in an irritating voice he shouted the old, quaint saying:

"Oh, my! if I were not sorry to leave my spade 
  I 'd from my wife and children a break have made." 

The people sitting at table pawed at each other, and from time to time shouted and yelled as if they were being roasted alive. The bearded chief workman slapped his bald head and joined in the uproar. Once he bent towards me, brushing my shoulder with his soft beard, and said in my ear, just as he might speak to a grown-up person:

"If your father were here, Alexei Maximitch, he would have added to the fun. A merry fellow he was--always cheerful. You remember him, don't you?"

"No."

"You don't? Well, once he and your grandmother --but wait a bit."

Tall and emaciated, somewhat resembling a conventional icon, he stood up, and bowing to grandmother, entreated in an extraordinarily gruff voice:

"Akulina Ivanovna, will you be so kind as to dance for us as you did once with Maxim Savatyevitch? It would cheer us up."

"What are you talking about, my dear man? What do you mean, Gregory Ivanovitch?" cried grandmother, smiling and bridling. "Fancy me dancing at my time of life! I should only make people laugh."

But suddenly she jumped up with a youthful air, arranged her skirts, and very upright, tossed her ponderous head and darted across the kitchen, crying:

"Well, laugh if you want to! And a lot of good may it do you. Now, Jaasha, play up!"

My uncle let himself go, and, closing his eyes, went on playing very slowly. Tsiganok stood still for a moment, and then leaped over to where grandmother was and encircled her, resting on his haunches, while she skimmed the floor without a sound, as if she were floating on air, her arms spread out, her eyebrows raised, her dark eyes gazing into space. She appeared very comical to me, and I made fun of her; but Gregory held up his finger sternly, and all the grown-up peopie looked disapprovingly over to my side of the room.

"Don't make a noise, Ivan," said Gregory, and Tsiganok obediently jumped to one side, and sat by the door, while Nyanya Eugenia, thrusting out her Adam's apple, began to sing in her low-pitched, pleasant voice:

"All the week till Saturday 
 She does earn what e'er she may, 
 Making lace from morn till night 
 Till she 's nearly lost her sight." 

Grandmother seemed more as if she were telling a story than dancing. She moved softly, dreamily; swaying slightly, sometimes looking about her from under her arms, the whole of her huge body wavering uncertainly, her feet feeling their way carefully. Then she stood still as if suddenly frightened by something; her face quivered and became overcast . . . but directly after it was again illuminated by her pleasant, cordial smile. Swinging to one side as if to make way for some one, she appeared to be refusing to give her hand, then letting her head droop seemed to die; again, she was listening to some one and smiling joyfully . . . and suddenly she was whisked from her place and turned round and round like a whirligig, her figure seemed to become more elegant, she seemed to grow taller, and we could not tear our eyes away from her-- so triumphantly beautiful and altogether charming did she appear in that moment of marvelous rejuvenation. And Nyanya Eugenia piped:

"Then on Sundays after Mass 
 Till midnight dances the lass, 
 Leaving as late as she dare, 
 Holidays with her are rare." 

When she had finished dancing, grandmother returned to her place by the samovar. They all applauded her, and as she put her hair straight, she said:

"That is enough! You have never seen real dancing. At our home in Balakya, there was one young girl--I have forgotten her name now, with many others--but when you saw her dance you cried for joy. To look at her was a treat. You did n't want anything else. How I envied her--sinner that I was!"

"Singers and dancers are the greatest people in the world," said Nyanya Eugenia gravely, and she began to sing something about King David, while Uncle Jaakov, embracing Tsiganok, said to him:

"You ought to dance in the wineshops. You would turn people's heads."

"I wish I could sing!" complained Tsiganok. "If God had given me a voice I should have been singing ten years by now, and should have gone on singing if only as a monk."

They all drank vodka, and Gregory drank an extra lot. As she poured out glass after glass for him, grandmother warned him:

"Take care, Grisha, or you 'll become quite blind."

"I don't care! I 've no more use for my eyesight," he replied firmly.

He drank, but he did not get tipsy, only becoming more loquacious every moment; and he spoke to me about my father nearly all the time.

"A man with a large heart was my friend Maxim Savatyevitch . . ."

Grandmother sighed as she corroborated:

"Yes, indeed he was--a true child of God."

All this was extremely interesting, and held me spellbound, and filled my heart with a tender, not unpleasant sadness. For sadness and gladness live within us side by side, almost inseparable; the one succeeding the other with an elusive, unappreciable swiftness.

Once Uncle Jaakov, being rather tipsy, began to rend his shirt, and to clutch furiously at his curly hair, his grizzled mustache, his nose and his pendulous lip.

"What am I?" he howled, dissolved in tears. "Why am I here?" And striking himself on the cheek, forehead and chest, he sobbed: "Worthless, degraded creature! Lost soul!"

"A--ah! You 're right!" growled Gregory.

But grandmother, who was also not quite sober, said to her son, catching hold of his hand:

"That will do, Jaasha. God knows how to teach us."

When she had been drinking, she was even more attractive; her eyes grew darker and smiled, shedding the warmth of her heart upon every one. Brushing aside the handkerchief which made her face too hot, she would say in a tipsy voice:

"Lord! Lord! How good everything is! Don't you see how good everything is?"

And this was a cry from her heart--the watchword of her whole life.

I was much impressed by the tears and cries of my happy-go-lucky uncle, and I asked grandmother why he cried and scolded and beat himself so.

"You want to know everything!" she said reluctantly, quite unlike her usual manner. "But wait a bit. You will be enlightened about this affair quite soon enough."

My curiosity was still more excited by this, and I went to the workshop and attacked Ivan on the subject, but he would not answer me. He just laughed quietly with a sidelong glance at Gregory, and hustled me out, crying:

"Give over now, and run away. If you don't I 'll put you in the vat and dye you."

Gregory, standing before the broad, low stove, with vats cemented to it, stirred them with a long black

V poker, lifting it up now and again to see the colored drops fall from its end. The brightly burning flames played on the skin-apron, multi-colored like the chasuble of a priest, which he wore. The dye simmered in the vats; an acrid vapor extended in a thick cloud to the door. Gregory glanced at me from under his glasses, with his clouded, bloodshot eyes, and said abruptly to Ivan:

"You are wanted in the yard. Can't you see?"

But when Tsiganok had gone into the yard, Gregory, sitting on a sack of santaline, beckoned me to him.

"Come here!"

Drawing me on to his knee, and rubbing his warm, soft beard against my cheek, he said in a tone of reminiscence:

"Your uncle beat and tortured his wife to death, and now his conscience pricks him. Do you understand? You want to understand everything, you see, and so you get muddled."

Gregory was as simple as grandmother, but his words were disconcerting, and he seemed to look through and through every one.

"How did he kill her?" he went on in a leisurely tone. "Why, like this. He was lying in bed with her, and he threw the counterpane over her head, and held it down while he beat her. Why? He doesn't know himself why he did it."

And paying no attention to Ivan, who, having returned with an armful of goods from the yard, was squatting before the fire, warming his hands, the head workman suggested:

"Perhaps it was because she was better than he was, and he was envious of her. The Kashmirins do not like good people, my boy. They are jealous of them. They cannot stand them, and try to get them out of the way. Ask your grandmother how they got rid of your father. She will tell you everything; she hates deceit, because she does not understand it. She may be reckoned among the saints, although she drinks wine and takes snuff. She is a splendid woman. Keep hold of her, and never let her go."

He pushed me towards the door, and I went out into the yard, depressed and scared. Vaniushka overtook me at the entrance of the house, and whispered softly:

"Don't be afraid of him. He is all right. Look him straight in the eyes. That's what he likes."

It was all very strange and distressing. I hardly knew any other existence, but I remembered vaguely that my father and mother used not to live like this; they had a different way of speaking, and a different idea of happiness. They always went about together and sat close to each other. They laughed very frequently and for a long time together, in the evenings, as they sat at the window and sang at the top of their voices; and people gathered together in the street and looked at them. The raised faces of these people as they looked up reminded me comically of dirty plates after dinner. But here people seldom laughed, and when they did it was not always easy to guess what they were laughing at. They often raged at one another, and secretly muttered threats against each other in the corners. The children were subdued and neglected; beaten down to earth like the dust by the rain. I felt myself a stranger in the house, and all the circumstances of my existence in it were nothing but a series of stabs, pricking me on to suspicion, and compelling me to study what went on with the closest attention.

My friendship with Tsiganok grew apace. Grandmother was occupied with household duties from sunrise till late at night, and I hung round Tsiganok nearly the whole day. He still used to put his hand under the rod whenever grandfather thrashed me, and the next day, displaying his swollen fingers, he would complain:

"There 's no sense in it! It does not make it any lighter for you, and look what it does to me. I won't stand it any longer, so there!"

But the next time he put himself in the way of being needlessly hurt just the same.

"But I thought you did not mean to do it again?" I would say.

"I did n't mean to, but it happened somehow. I did it without thinking."

Soon after this I learned something about Tsiganok which increased my interest in and love for him.

Every Friday he used to harness the bay gelding Sharapa, grandmother's pet--a cunning, saucy, dainty creature--to the sledge. Then he put on his fur coat, which reached to his knees, and his heavy cap, and tightly buckling his green belt, set out for the market to buy provisions. Sometimes it was very late before he returned, and the whole household became uneasy. Some one would run to the window every moment, and breathing on the panes to thaw the ice, would look up and down the road.

"Is n't he in sight yet?"

"No."

Grandmother was always more concerned than any of them.

"Alas!" she would exclaim to her sons and my grandfather, "you have ruined both the man and the horse. I wonder you are n't ashamed of yourselves, you conscienceless creatures! Ach! You family of fools, you tipplers! God will punish you for this."

"That is enough!" growled grandfather, scowling. "This is the last time it happens."

Sometimes Tsiganok did not return till midday. My uncles and grandfather hurried out to the yard to meet him, and grandmother ambled after them like a bear, taking snuff with a determined air, because it was her hour for taking it. The children ran out, and the joyful unloading of the sledge began. It was full of pork, dead birds, and joints of all kinds of meat.

"Have you bought all we told you to?" asked grandfather, probing the load with a sidelong glance of his sharp eyes.

"Yes, it is all right," answered Ivan gaily, as he jumped about the yard, and slapped his mittened hands together, to warm himself.

"Don't wear your mittens out. They cost money," said grandfather sternly. "Have you any change?"

"No."

Grandfather walked quietly round the load and said in a low tone:

"Again you have bought too much. However, you can't do it without money, can you? I 'll have no more of this." And he strode away scowling.

My uncles joyfully set to work on the load, whistling as they balanced bird, fish, goose-giblets, calves' feet, and enormous pieces of meat on their hands.