My Childhood (20 page)

"Here? When? Good God!"

And suddenly he cried, jumping about comically:

"God bless us! Is it possible?"

"Don't make so much noise," said the policeman sternly.

Grandfather looked round and saw me.

"Put away your spade, and go indoors," he said.

I hid myself in a corner and saw them go to the drayman's stall, and I saw the policeman take off his

right glove and strike the palm of his left hand with it as he said:

"He knows we 're after him. He left the horse to wander about, and he is hiding here somewhere."

I rushed into the kitchen to tell grandmother all about it; she was kneading dough for bread, and her floured head was bobbing up and down as she listened to me, and then said calmly:

"He has been stealing something, I suppose. You run away now. What is it to do with you?"

When I went out into the yard again grandfather was standing at the gate with his cap off, and his eyes raised to heaven, crossing himself. His face looked angry; he was bristling with anger, in fact, and one of his legs was trembling.

"I told you to go indoors!"
he shouted, stamping at me; but he came with me into the kitchen, calling: "Come here, Mother!"

They went into the next room, and carried on a long conversation in whispers; but when grandmother came back to the kitchen I saw at once from her expression that something dreadful had happened.

"Why do you look so frightened?" I asked her.

"Hold your tongue!" she said quietly.

All day long there was an oppressive feeling about the house. Grandfather and grandmother frequently exchanged glances of disquietude, and spoke together, softly uttering unintelligible, brief words which intensified the feeling of unrest.

"Light lamps all over the house, Mother," grandfather ordered, coughing.

We dined without appetite, yet hurriedly, as if we were expecting some one. Grandfather was tired, and puffed out his cheeks as he grumbled in a squeaky voice:

"The power of the devil over man! . . . You see it everywhere . . . even our religious people and ecclesiastics! . . . What is the reason of it, eh?"

Grandmother sighed.

The hours of that silver-gray winter's day dragged wearily on, and the atmosphere of the house seemed to become increasingly disturbed and oppressive. Before the evening another policeman came, a red, fat man, who sat by the stove in the kitchen and dozed, and when grandmother asked him: "How did they find this out?" he answered in a thick voice: "We find out everything, so don't you worry yourself!"

I sat at the window, I remember, warming an old two-kopeck piece in my mouth, preparatory to an attempt to make an impression on the frozen windowpanes of St. George and the Dragon. All of a sudden there came a dreadful noise from the vestibule, the door was thrown open, and Petrovna shrieked deliriously:

"Look and see what you 've got out there!"

Catching sight of the policeman, she darted back into the vestibule; but he caught her by the skirt, and cried fearfully:

"Wait! Who are you? What are we to look for?"

Suddenly brought to a halt on the threshold, she fell on her knees and began to scream; and her words and her tears seemed to choke her:

"I saw it when I went to milk the cows . . . what is that thing that looks like a boot in the Kashmirins' garden? I said to myself--"

But at this grandfather stamped his foot and shouted:

"You are lying, you fool! You could not see anything in our garden, the fence is too high and there are no crevices. You are lying; there is nothing in our garden."

"Little Father, it is true!" howled Petrovna, stretching out one hand to him, and pressing the other to her head. "It Is true, little Father . . . should I lie about such a thing? There were footprints leading to your fence, and the snow was all trampled in one place, and I went and looked through the fence and I saw . . .
him .
. . lying there . . ."

"Who? Who?"

This question was repeated over and over again, but nothing more was to be got out of her. Suddenly they all made a dash for the garden, jostling each other as if they had gone mad; and there, by the pit, with the snow softly spread over him, lay Uncle Peter, with his back against the burnt beam and his head fallen on his chest. Under his right ear was a deep gash, red, like a mouth, from which jagged pieces of flesh stuck out like teeth.

I shut my eyes in horror at the sight, but I could see, through my eyelashes, the harness-maker's knife, which I knew so well, lying on Uncle Peter's knees, clutched in the dark fingers of his right hand; his left hand was cut off and was sinking into the snow. Under the drayman the snow had thawed, so that his diminutive body was sunk deep in the soft, sparkling down, and looked even more childlike than when he was alive. On the right side of the body a strange red design, resembling a bird, had been formed on the snow; but on the left the snow was untouched, and had remained smooth and dazzingly bright. The head had fallen forward in an attitude of submission, with the chin pressed against the chest, and crushing the thick curly beard; and amidst the red streams of congealed blood on the breast there lay a large brass cross. The noise they were all making seemed to set my head spinning. Petrovna never left off shrieking, the policeman shouted orders to Valei as he sent him on an errand, and grandfather cried:

"Take care not to tread in his footprints!"

But he suddenly knit his brows, and looking on the ground said in a loud, imperious tone to the policeman: "There is nothing for you to kick up a row about, Constable! This is God's affair ... a judgment from God . . . yet you must be fussing about some nonsense or other--bah!"

And at once a hush fell on them all; they stood still and, taking in a long breath, crossed themselves. Several people now came hastily into the garden from the yard. They climbed over Petrovna's fence and some of them fell down, and uttered exclamations of pain; but for all that they were quite quiet until grandfather cried in a voice of despair:

"Neighbors! why are you spoiling my raspberry bushes? Have you no consciences?"

Grandmother, sobbing violently, took my hand and brought me into the house.

"What did he do?" I asked.

"Couldn't you see?" she answered.

For the rest of the evening, until far into the night, strangers tramped in and out of the kitchen and the other rooms talking loudly; the police were in command, and a man who looked like a deacon was making notes, and quacking like a duck:

"Wha--at? Wha--at?"

Grandmother offered them all tea in the kitchen, where, sitting at the table, was a rotund, whiskered individual, marked with smallpox, who was saying in a shrill voice:

"His real name we don't know ... all that we can find out is that his birthplace was Elatma. As for the Deaf Mute . . . that is only a nickname . . . he was not deaf and dumb at all . . . he knew all about the business. . . . And there's a third man in it too ... we 've got to find him yet. They have been robbing churches for a long time; that was their lay."

"Good Lord!" ejaculated Petrovna, very red, and perspiring profusely.

As for me, I lay on the ledge of the stove and looked down on them, and thought how short and fat and dreadful they all were.

CHAPTER X

EARLY one Saturday morning I made my way to Petrovna's kitchen-garden to catch robins. I was there a long time, because the pert red-breasts refused to go into the trap; tantalizingly beautiful, they hopped playfully over the silvery frozen snow, and flew on to the branches of the frost-covered bushes, scattering the blue snow-crystals all about. It was such a pretty sight that I forgot my vexation at my lack of success; in fact, I was not a very keen sportsman, for I took more pleasure in the incidents of the chase than in its results, and my greatest delight was to observe the ways of the birds and think about them. I was quite happy sitting alone on the edge of a snowy field listening to the birds chirping in the crystal stillness of the frosty day, when, faintly, in the distance, I heard the fleeting sounds of the bells of a troika--like the melancholy song of a skylark in the Russian winter. I was benumbed by sitting in the snow, and I felt that my ears were frost-bitten, so I gathered up the trap and the cages, climbed over the wall into grandfather's garden, and made my way to the house.

The gate leading to the street was open, and a man of colossal proportions was leading three steaming horses, harnessed to a large, closed sledge, out of the yard, whistling merrily the while. My heart leaped.

"Whom have you brought here?"

He turned and looked at me from under his arms, and jumped on to the driver's seat before he replied:

"The priest."

But I was not convinced; and if it
was
the priest, he must have come to see one of the lodgers.

"Gee-up!" cried the driver, and he whistled gaily as he slashed at the horses with his reins.

The horses tore across the fields, and I stood looking after them; then I closed the gate. The first thing I heard as I entered the empty kitchen was my mother's energetic voice in the adjoining room, saying very distinctly:

"What is the matter now? Do you want to kill me?"

Without taking off my outdoor clothes, I threw down the cages and ran into the vestibule, where I collided with grandfather; he seized me by the shoulder, looked into my face with wild eyes, and swallowing with difficulty, said hoarsely:

"Your mother has come back ... go to her . . . wait . . .!" He shook me so hard that I was nearly taken off my feet, and reeled against the door of the room. "Go on! . . . Go ...!"

I knocked at the door, which was protected by felt and oilcloth, but it was some time before my hand, benumbed with cold, and trembling with nervousness, found the latch; and when at length I softly entered, I halted on the threshold, dazed and bewildered.

"Here he is!" said mother. "Lord! how big he is grown. Why, don't you know me? . . . What a way you 've dressed him! . . . And, yes, his ears are going white! Make haste, Mama, and get some goose-grease."

She stood in the middle of the room, bending over me as she took off my outdoor clothes, and turning me about as if I were nothing more than a ball; her massive figure was clothed in a warm, soft, beautiful dress, as full as a man's cloak, which was fastened by black buttons, running obliquely from the shoulder to the hem of the skirt. I had never seen anything like it before.

Her face seemed smaller than it used to be, and her eyes larger and more sunken; while her hair seemed to be of a deeper gold. As she undressed me, she threw the garments across the threshold, her red lips curling in disgust, and all the time her voice rang out:

"Why don't you speak? Aren't you glad to see me? Phoo! what a dirty shirt. . . ."

Then she rubbed my ears with goose-grease, which hurt; but such a fragrant, pleasant odor came from her while she was doing it, that the pain seemed less than usual.

I pressed close to her, looking up into her eyes, too moved to speak, and through her words I could hear grandmother's low, unhappy voice:

"He is so self-willed ... he has got quite out of hand. He is not afraid of grandfather, even. . . . Oh, Varia! . . . Varia!"

"Don't whine, Mother, for goodness' sake; it does n't make things any better."

Everything looked small and pitiful and old beside mother. I felt old too, as old as grandfather.

Pressing me to her knees, and smoothing my hair with her warm, heavy hand, she said:

"He wants some one strict over him. And it is time he went to school. . . . You will like to learn lessons, won't you?"

"I 've learned all I want to know."

"You will have to learn a little more. . . . Why! How strong you 've grown!" And she laughed heartily in her deep contralto tones as she played with me.

When grandfather came in, pale as ashes, with bloodshot eyes, and bristling with rage, she put me from her and asked in a loud voice:

"Well, what have you settled, Father? Am I to go?"

He stood at the window scraping the ice off the panes with his finger-nails, and remained silent for a long while. The situation was strained and painful, and, as was usual with me in such moments of tension, my body felt as if it were all eyes and ears, and something seemed to swell within my breast, causing an intense desire to scream.

"Lexei, leave the room!" said grandfather roughly.

"Why?" asked mother, drawing me to her again. "You shall not go away from this place. I forbid it!" Mother stood up, gliding up the room, just like a rosy cloud, and placed herself behind grandfather.

"Listen to me, Papasha--"

He turned upon her, shrieking "Shut up!"

"I won't have you shouting at me," said mother coolly.

Grandmother rose from the couch, raising her finger admonishingly.

"Now, Varvara!"

And grandfather sat down, muttering:

"Wait a bit! I want to know who--? Eh? Who was it? . . . How did it happen?"

And suddenly he roared out in a voice which did not seem to belong to him:

"You have brought shame upon me, Varka!"

"Go out of the room!" grandmother said to me; and I went into the kitchen, feeling as if I were being suffocated, climbed on to the stove, and stayed there a long time listening to their conversation, which was audible through the partition. They either all talked at once, interrupting one another, or else fell into a long silence as if they had fallen asleep. The subject of their conversation was a baby, lately born to my mother and given into some one's keeping; but I could not understand whether grandfather was angry with mother for giving birth to a child without asking his permission, or for not bringing the child to him.

He came into the kitchen later, looking dishevelled; his face was livid, and he seemed very tired. With him came grandmother, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the basque of her blouse. He sat down on a bench, doubled up, resting his hands on it, tremulously biting his pale lips; and she knelt down in front of him, and said quietly but with great earnestness:

"Father, forgive her! For Christ's sake forgive her! You can't get rid of her in this manner. Do you think that such things don't happen amongst the gentry, and in merchants' families? You know what women are. Now, forgive her! No one is perfect, you know."

Grandfather leaned back against the wall and looked into her face; then he growled, with a bitter laugh which was almost a sob:

"Well--what next? Who would n't you forgive?