My Childhood (14 page)

"Extinguish in me the flame of passion, for I am in misery and accursed."

I knew all the morning prayers by heart, and even in my dreams I could say what was to come next, and I followed with intense interest to hear if he made a mistake or missed out a word--which very seldom happened; but when it did, it aroused a feeling of malicious glee in me.

When he had finished his prayers, grandfather used to say "Good morning!" to grandmother and me, and we returned his greeting and sat down to table. Then I used to say to him:

"You left out a word this morning."

"Not really
^?
" grandfather would say with an uneasy air of incredulity.

"Yes. You should have said, 'This, my Faith, reigns supreme,' but you did not say 'reigns.'"

"There now!" he would exclaim, much perturbed, and blinking guiltily.

Afterwards he would take a cruel revenge on me for pointing out his mistake to him; but for the moment, seeing how disturbed he was, I was able to enjoy my triumph.

One day grandmother said to him jokingly:

"God must get tired of listening to your prayers, Father. You do nothing but insist on the same things over and over again."

"What's that?" he drawled in an ominous voice. "What are you nagging about now?"

"I say that you do not offer God so much as one little word from your own heart, so far as I can hear."

He turned livid, and quivering with rage, jumped up on his chair and threw a dish at her head, yelping with a sound like that made by a saw on a piece of wood:

"Take that, you old hag!"

When he spoke of the omnipotence of God, he always emphasized its cruelty above every other attribute. "Man sinned, and the Flood was sent; sinned again, and his towns were destroyed by fire; then God punished people by famine and plague, and even now He is always holding a sword over the earth--a scourge for sinners. All who have wilfully broken the commandments of God will be punished by sorrow and ruin." And he emphasized this by rapping his fingers on the table.

It was hard for me to believe in the cruelty of God, and I suspected grandfather of having made it all up on purpose to inspire me with fear not of God but of himself; so I asked him frankly:

"Are you saying all this to make me obey you?"

And he replied with equal frankness:

"Well, perhaps I am. Do you mean to disobey me again?"

"And how about what grandmother says?"

"Don't you believe the old fool!" he admonished me sternly. "From her youth she has always been stupid, illiterate, and unreasonable. I shall tell her she must not dare to talk to you again on such an important matter. Tell me, now--how many companies of angels are there
^?
"

I gave the required answer, and then I asked:

"Are they limited companies?"

"Oh, you scatterbrain!" he laughed, covering his eyes and biting his lips. "What have companies to do with God . . . they belong to life on earth . . . they are founded to set the laws at naught."

"What are laws?'

"Laws! Well, they are really derived from custom," the old man explained, with pleased alacrity; and his intelligent, piercing eyes sparkled. "People living together agree amongst themselves--'Such and such is our best course of action; we will make a custom of it--a rule'; finally it becomes a law. For example, before they begin a game, children will settle amongst themselves how it is to be played, and what rules are to be observed. Laws are made in the same way."

"And what have companies to do with laws?"

"Why, they are like an impudent fellow; they come along and make the laws of no account."

"But why?"

"Ah! that you would not understand," he replied, knitting his brows heavily; but afterwards, as if in explanation, he said:

"All the actions of men help to work out God's plans. Men desire one thing, but He wills something quite different. Human institutions are never lasting. The Lord blows on them, and they fall into dust and ashes."

I had reason for being interested in "companies," so I went on inquisitively:

"But what does Uncle Jaakov mean when he sings:

"The Angels bright 
 For God will fight, 
 But Satan's slaves 
 Are companies"? 

Grandfather raised his hand to his beard, thus hiding his mouth, and closed his eyes. His cheeks quivered, and I guessed that he was laughing inwardly.

"Jaakov ought to have his feet tied together and be thrown into the water," he said. "There was no necessity for him to sing or for you to listen to that song. It is nothing but a silly joke which is current in Kalonga--a piece of schismatical, heretical nonsense." And looking, as it were, through and beyond me, he murmured thoughtfully: "U--u--ugh,
you!"

But though he had set God over mankind, as a Being to be very greatly feared, none the less did he, like grandmother, invoke Him in all his doings.

The only saints grandmother knew were Nikolai, Yowry, Frola, and Lavra, who were full of kindness and sympathy with human-nature, and went about in the villages and towns sharing the life of the people, and regulating all their concerns; but grandfather's saints were nearly all males, who cast down idols, or defied the Roman emperors, and were tortured, burned or flayed alive in consequence.

Sometimes grandfather would say musingly:

"If only God would help me to sell that little house, even at a small profit, I would make a public thanksgiving to St. Nicholas."

But grandmother would say to me, laughingly:

"That's just like the old fool! Does he think St. Nicholas will trouble himself about selling a house
^'
? Has n't our little Father Nicholas something better to do?"

I kept by me for many years a church calendar which had belonged to grandfather, containing several inscriptions in his handwriting. Amongst others, opposite the day of Joachim and Anne, was written in red ink, and very upright characters:

"My benefactors, who averted a calamity."

I remember that "calamity."

In his anxiety about the maintenance of his very unprofitable children, grandfather set up as a moneylender, and used to receive articles in pledge secretly. Some one laid an information against him, and one night the police came to search the premises. There was a great fuss, but it ended well, and grandfather prayed till sunrise the next morning, and before breakfast, and in my presence, wrote those words in the calendar.

Before supper he used to read with me the Psalms, the breviary, or the heavy book of Ephraim Sirine; but as soon as he had supped he began to pray again, and his melancholy words of contrition resounded in the stillness of evening:

"What can I offer to Thee, or how can I atone to Thee, O generous God, O King of Kings! . . . Preserve us from all evil imaginations. . . . O Lord, protect me from certain persons! . . . My tears fall like rain, and the memory of my sins . . ."

But very often grandmother said:

"Oie, I am dog-tired! I shall go to bed without saying my prayers."

Grandfather used to take me to church--to vespers on Saturday, and to High Mass on Sundays and festivals--but even in church I made a distinction as to which God was being addressed; whatever the priest or the deacon recited--that was to grandfather's God; but the choir always sang to grandmother's God. Of course I can only crudely express this childish distinction which I made between these two Gods, but I remember how it seemed to tear my heart with terrific violence, and how grandfather's God aroused in my mind a feeling of terror and unpleasantness. A Being Who loved no one, He followed all of us about with His severe eyes, seeking and finding all that was ugly, evil, and sinful in us. Evidently He put no trust in man, He was always insisting on penance, and He loved to chastise.

In those days my thoughts and feelings about God were the chief nourishment of my soul and were the most beautiful ones of my existence. All other impressions which I received did nothing but disgust me by their cruelty and squalor, and awaken in me a sense of repugnance and ferocity. God was the best and brightest of all the beings who lived about me--grandmother's God, that Dear Friend of all creation; and naturally I could not help being disturbed by the question--"How is it that grandfather cannot see the Good God?"

I was not allowed to run about the streets because it made me too excited. I became, as it were, intoxicated by the impressions which I received, and there was almost always a violent scene afterwards.

I had no comrades. The neighbors' children treated me as an enemy. I objected to their calling me "the Kashmirin boy," and seeing that they did it all the more, calling out to each other as soon as they saw me: "Look, here comes that brat, Kashmirin's grandson. Go for him!" then the fight would begin. I was strong for my age and active with my fists, and my enemies, knowing this, always fell upon me in a crowd; and as a rule the street vanquished me, and I returned home with a cut across my nose, gashed lips, and bruises all over my face--all in rags and smothered in dust.

"What now
^?
" grandmother exclaimed as she met me, with a mixture of alarm and pity; "so you 've been fighting again, you young rascal? What do you mean by it?"

She washed my face, and applied to my bruises copper coins or fomentations of lead, saying as she did so:

"Now, what do you mean by all this fighting? You are as quiet as anything at home, but out of doors you are like I don't know what. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I shall tell grandfather not to let you go out."

Grandfather used to see my bruises, but he never scolded me; he only quackled, and roared:

"More decorations! While you are in my house, young warrior, don't you dare to run about the streets; do you hear me?"

I was never attracted, by the street if it was quiet, but as soon as I heard the merry buzz of the children, I ran out of the yard, forgetting all about grandfather's prohibition. Bruises and taunts did not hurt me, but the brutality of the street sports--a brutality only too well known to me, wearying and oppressive, reducing one to a state of frenzy--disturbed me tremendously. I could not contain myself when the children baited dogs and cocks, tortured cats, drove away the goats of the Jews, jeered at drunken vagabonds, and at happy "Igosha with death in his pocket."

This was a tall, withered-looking, smoke-dried individual clad in a heavy sheepskin, with coarse hair on his fleshless, rusty face. He went about the streets, stooping, wavering strangely, and never speaking--gazing fixedly all the time at the ground. His iron-hued face, with its small, sad eyes, inspired me with an uneasy respect for him. Here was a man, I thought^ preoccupied with a weighty matter; he was looking for something, and it was wrong to hinder him.

The little boys used to run after him, slinging stones at his broad back; and after going on for some time as if he did not notice them, and as if he were not even conscious of the pain of the blows, he would stand still, throw up his head, push back his ragged cap with a spasmodic movement of his hands, and look about him as if he had but just awoke.

"Igosha with death in his pocket! Igosha, where are you going? Look out, Death in your pocket!" cried the boys.

He would thrust his hand in his pocket, then stooping quickly would pick up a stone or a lump of dry mud from the ground, and flourish his long arms as he muttered abuse, which was confined always to the same few filthy words. The boys' vocabulary was immeasurably richer than his in this respect. Sometimes he hobbled after them, but his long sheepskin hindered him in running, and he would fall on his knees, resting his black hands on the ground, and looking just like the withered branch of a tree; while the children aimed stones at his sides and back, and the biggest of them ventured to run quite close to him and, jumping about him, scattered handfuls of dust over his head.

But the most painful spectacle which I beheld in the streets was that of our late foreman, Gregory Ivanovitch, who had become quite blind, and now went about begging; looking so tall and handsome, and never speaking. A little gray-haired old woman held him by the arm, and halting under the windows, to which she never raised her eyes, she wailed in a squeaky voice: "For Christ's sake, pity the poor blind!" But Gregory Ivanovitch said never a word. His dark glasses looked straight into the walls of the houses, in at the windows, or into the faces of the passers-by; his broad beard gently brushed his stained hands; his lips were closely pressed together. I often saw him, but I never heard a sound proceed from that sealed mouth; and the thought of that silent old man weighed upon me torturingly. I could not go to him--I never went near him; on the contrary, as soon as I caught sight of him being led along, I used to run into the house and say to grandmother:

"Gregory is out there."

"Is he?" she would exclaim in an uneasy, pitying tone. "Well, run back and give him this."

But I would refuse curtly and angrily, and she would go to the gate herself and stand talking to him for a long time. He used to laugh, and pull his beard, but he said little, and that little in monosyllables. Sometimes grandmother brought him into the kitchen and gave him tea and something to eat, and every time she did so he inquired where I was. Grandmother called me, but I ran away and hid myself in the yard. I could not go to him. I was conscious of a feeling of intolerable shame in his presence, and I knew that grandmother was ashamed too. Only once we discussed Gregory between ourselves, and this was one day when, having led him to the gate, she came back through the yard, crying and hanging her head. I went to her and took her hand.

"Why do you run away from him
^?
" she asked softly. "He is a good man, and very fond of you, you know."

"Why does n't grandfather keep him?" I asked.

"Grandfather?" she halted, and then uttered in a very low voice those prophetic words: "Remember what I say to you now--God will punish us grievously for this. He will punish us--"

And she was not wrong, for ten years later, when she had been laid to rest, grandfather was wandering through the streets of the town, himself a beggar, and out of his mind--pitifully whining under the windows: