My Childhood (12 page)

"I'll box your ears; that will teach you who it is that is blessed," replied grandfather, snorting angrily; but I felt that his anger was only assumed, because he thought it was the right thing to be angry.

And I was not mistaken; in less than a minute it was plain that he had forgotten all about me as he muttered:

"Yes, yes! King David showed himself to be very spiteful--in sport, and in his songs, and in the Absalom affair. Ah! Maker of Songs, Master of Language, and Jester. That is what you were!"

I left off reading to look at his frowning, wondering face. His eyes, blinking slightly, seemed to look through me, and a warm, melancholy brightness shone from them; but I knew that before long his usual harsh expression would return to them. He drummed on the table spasmodically with his thin fingers; his stained nails shone, and his golden eyebrows moved up and down.

"Grandfather!"

"Eh?"

"Tell mc a story."

"Get on with your reading, you lazy clown!" he said querulously, rubbing his eyes just as if he had been awakened from sleep. "You like stories, but you don't care for the Psalms!"

I rather suspected that he, too, liked stories better than the Psalter, which he knew almost by heart, for he had made a vow to read it through every night before going to bed, which he did in a sort of chant, just as the deacons recite the breviary in church.

At my earnest entreaty, the old man, who was growing softer every day, gave in to me.

"Very well, then! You will always have the Psalter with you, but God will be calling me to judgment before long."

So, reclining against the upholstered back of the old armchair, throwing back his head and gazing at the ceiling, he quietly and thoughtfully began telling me about old times, and about his father. Once robbers had come to Balakhana, to rob Zaev, the merchant, and grandfather's father rushed to the belfry to sound the alarm; but the robbers came up after him, felled him with their swords, and threw him down from the tower.

"But I was an infant at the time, so of course I do not remember anything about the affair. The first person I remember is a Frenchman; that was when I was twelve years old--exactly twelve. Three batches of prisoners were driven into Balakhana--all small, wizened people; some of them dressed worse than beggars, and others so cold that they could hardly stand by themselves. The peasants would have beaten them to death, but the escort prevented that and drove them away; and there was no more trouble after that. We got used to the Frenchmen, who showed themselves to be skilful and sagacious; merry enough too . . . sometimes they sang songs. Gentlemen used to come out from Nijni in troikas to examine the prisoners; some of them abused the Frenchmen and shook their fists at them, and even went so far as to strike them, while others spoke kindly to them in their own tongue, gave them money, and showed them great cordiality. One old gentleman covered his face with his hands and wept, and said that that villain Bonaparte had ruined the French. There, you see! He was a Russian, and a gentleman, and he had a good heart--he pitied those foreigners."

He was silent for a moment, keeping his eyes closed, and smoothing his hair with his hands; then he went on, recalling the past with great precision.

"Winter had cast its spell over the streets, the peasants' huts were frostbound, and the Frenchmen used sometimes to run to our mother's house and stand under the windows--she used to make little loaves to sell--and tap on the glass, shouting and jumping about as they asked for hot bread. Mother would not have them in our cottage, but she threw them the loaves from the window; and all hot as they were, they snatched them up and thrust them into their breasts, against their bare skin. How they bore the heat I cannot imagine! Many of them died of cold, for they came from a warm country, and were not accustomed to frost. Two of them lived in our washhouse, in the kitchen garden--an officer, with his orderly, Miron.

"The officer was a tall, thin man, with his bones coming through his skin, and he used to go about wrapped in a woman's cloak which reached to his knees. He was very amiable, but a drunkard, and my mother used to brew beer on the quiet and sell it to him. When he had been drinking he used to sing. When he had learned to speak our language he used to air his views--'Your country is not white at all, it is black--and bad!' He spoke very imperfectly, but we could understand him, and what he said was quite true. The upper banks of the Volga are not pleasing, but farther south the earth is warmer, and on the Caspian Sea snow is never even seen. One can believe that, for there is no mention of either snow or winter in the Gospels, or in the Acts, or in the Psalms, as far as I remember . . . and the place where Christ lived . . . Well, as soon as we have finished the Psalms we will read the Gospels together."

He fell into another silence, just as if he had dropped off to sleep. His thoughts were far away, and his eyes, as they glanced sideways out of the window, looked small and sharp.

"Tell me some more," I said, as a gentle reminder of my presence.

He started, and then began again.

"Well--we were talking about French people. They are human beings like ourselves, after all, not worse, or more sinful. Sometimes they used to call out to my mother, 'Madame! Madame!'--that means 'my lady,' 'my mistress'--and she would put flour-- five poods of it--into their sacks. Her strength was extraordinary for a woman; she could lift me up by the hair quite easily until I was twenty, and even at that age I was no light weight. Well, this orderly, Miron, loved horses; he used to go into the yard and make signs for them to give him a horse to groom. At first there was trouble about it--there were disputes and enmity--but in the end the peasants used to call him 'Hi, Miron!' and he used to laugh and nod his head, and run to them. He was sandy, almost red-haired, with a large nose and thick lips. He knew all about horses, and treated their maladies with wonderful success; later on he became a veterinary surgeon at Nijni, but he went out of his mind and was killed in a fire. Towards the spring the officer began to show signs of breaking up, and passed quietly away, one day in early spring, while he was sitting at the window of the outhouse--just sitting and thinking, with drooping head.

"That is how his end came. I was very grieved about it. I cried a little, even, on the quiet. He was so gentle. He used to pull my ears, and talk to me so kindly in his own tongue. I could not understand him, but I liked to hear him--human kindness is not to be bought in any market. He began to teach me his language, but my mother forbade it, and even went so far as to send me to the priest, who prescribed a beating for me, and went himself to make a complaint to the officer. In those days, my lad, we were treated very harshly. You have not experienced anything like it yet. . . . What you have had to put up with is nothing to it, and don't you forget it! . . . Take my own case, for example. ... I had to go through so much--"

Darkness began to fall. Grandfather seemed to grow curiously large in the twilight, and his eyes gleamed like those of a cat. On most subjects he spoke quietly, carefully, and thoughtfully, but when he talked about himself his words came quickly and his tone was passionate and boastful, and I did not like to hear him; nor did I relish his frequent and peremptory command:

"Remember what I am telling you now! Take care you don't forget this!"

He told me of many things which I had no desire to remember, but which, without any command from him, I involuntarily retained in my memory, to cause me a morbid sickness of heart.

He never told fictitious stories, but always related events which had really happened; and I also noticed that he hated to be questioned, which prompted me to ask persistently:

"Who are the best--the French or the Russians?" "How can I tell? I never saw a Frenchman at home," he growled angrily. "A Pole cat is all right in its own hole," he added. "But are the Russians good?" "In many respects they are, but they were better when the landlords ruled. We are all at sixes and sevens now; people can't even get a living. The gentlefolk, of course, are to blame, because they have more intelligence to back them up; but
that
can't be said of all of them, but only of a few good ones who have already been proved. As for the others--most of them are as foolish as mice; they will take anything you like to give them. We have plenty of nut shells amongst us, but the kernels are missing; only nut shells, the kernels have been devoured. There 's a lesson for you, man! We ought to have learned it, our wits ought to have been sharpened by now; but we are not keen enough yet."

"Are Russians stronger than other people?" "We have some very strong people amongst us; but it is not strength which is so important, but dexterity. As far as sheer strength goes, the horse is our superior."

"But why did the French make war on us?"

"Well, war is the Emperor's affair. We can't expect to understand about it."

But to my question: "What sort of a man was Bonaparte?" grandfather replied in a tone of retrospection:

"He was a wicked man. He wanted to make war on the whole world, and after that he wanted to make us all equal--without rulers, or masters; every one to be equal, without distinction of class, under the same rules, professing the same religion, so that the only difference between one person and another would be their names. It was all nonsense, of course. Lobsters are the only creatures which cannot be distinguished one from the other . . . but fish are divided into classes. The sturgeon will not associate with the sheat-fish, and the sterlet refuses to make a friend of the herring. There have been Bonapartes amongst us; there was Razin (Stepan Timotheev), and Pygatch (Emilian Ivanov)--but I will tell you about them another time."

Sometimes he would remain silent for a long time, gazing at me with rolling eyes, as if he had never seen me before, which was not at all pleasant. But he never spoke to me of my father or my mother. Now and again grandmother would enter noiselessly during these conversations, and taking a seat in the corner, would remain there for a long time silent and invisible. Then she would ask suddenly in her caressing voice:

"Do you remember, Father, how lovely it was when we went on a pilgrimage to Mouron? What year would that be now
^?
"

After pondering, grandfather would answer carefully:

"I can't say exactly, but it was before the cholera. It was the year we caught those escaped convicts in the woods."

"True, true! We were still frightened of them--"

"That's right!"

I asked what escaped convicts were, and why they were running about the woods; and grandfather rather reluctantly explained.

"They are simply men who have run away from prison--from the work they have been set to do."

"How did you catch them?"

"How did we catch them? Why, like little boys play hide-and-seek--some run away and the others look for them and catch them. When they were caught they were thrashed, their nostrils were slit, and they were branded on the forehead as a sign that they were convicts."

"But why?"

"Ah! that is the question--and one I can't answer. As to which is in the wrong--the one who runs away or the one who pursues him--that also is a mystery!"

"And do you remember, Father," said grandmother, "after the great fire, how we--?"

Grandfather, who put accuracy before everything else, asked grimly:

"What great fire?"

When they went over the past like this, they forgot all about me. Their voices and their words mingled so softly and so harmoniously, that it sounded sometimes as if they were singing melancholy songs about illnesses and fires, about massacred people and sudden deaths, about clever rogues, and religious maniacs, and harsh landlords.

"What a lot we have lived through! What a lot we have seen!" murmured grandfather softly.

"We have n't had such a bad life, have we?" said grandmother. "Do you remember how well the spring began, after Varia was born?"

"That was in the year '48, during the Hungarian Campaign; and the day after the christening they drove out her godfather, Tikhon--"

"And he disappeared," sighed grandmother.

"Yes; and from that time God's blessings have seemed to flow off our house like water off a duck's back. Take Varvara, for instance--"

"Now, Father, that will do!"

"What do you mean--'That will do'?" he asked, scowling at her angrily. "Our children have turned out badly, whichever way you look at them. What has become of the vigor of our youth? We thought we were storing it up for ourselves in our children, as one might pack something away carefully in a basket; when, lo and behold, God changes it in our hands into a riddle without an answer!"

He ran about the room, uttering cries as if he had burned himself, and groaning as if he were ill; then turning on grandmother he began to abuse his children, shaking his small, withered fist at her threateningly as he cried:

"And it is all your fault for giving in to them, and for taking their part, you old hag!"

His grief and excitement culminated in a tearful howl as he threw himself on the floor before the icon, and beating his withered, hollow breast with all his force, cried:

"Lord, have I sinned more than others? Why then--?"

And he trembled from head to foot, and his eyes, wet with tears, glittered with resentment and animosity.

Grandmother, without speaking, crossed herself as she sat in her dark corner, and then, approaching him cautiously, said:

"Now, why are you fretting like this? God knows what He is doing. You say that other people's children are better than ours, but I assure you, Father, that you will find the same thing everywhere--quarrels, and bickerings, and disturbances. All parents wash away their sins with their tears; you are not the only one."

Sometimes these words would pacify him, and he would begin to get ready for bed; then grandmother and I would steal away to our attic.

But once when she approached him with soothing speech, he turned on her swiftly, and with all his force dealt her a blow in the face with his fist.