My Childhood (22 page)

But what weighed upon me most of all was the fact, which I both saw and felt, that it was very hard for mother to go on living in grandfather's house. Her expression became more sullen every day; she seemed to look upon everything with the eyes of a stranger. She used to sit for a long time together at the window overlooking the garden, saying nothing, and all her brilliant coloring seemed to have faded.

In lesson-time her deep-set eyes seemed to look right through me, at the wall, or at the window, as she asked me questions in a weary voice, and straightway forgot the answers; and she flew into rages with me much oftener--which hurt me, for mothers ought to behave better than any one else, as they do in stories.

Sometimes I said to her:

"You do not like living with us, do you
^?
"

"Mind your own business!" she would cry angrily.

It began to dawn upon me that grandfather was up to something which worried grandmother and mother. He often shut himself up with mother in her room, and there we heard him wailing and squeaking like the wooden pipe of Nikanora, the one-sided shepherd, which always affected me so unpleasantly. Once when one of these conversations was going on, mother shrieked so that every one in the house could hear her:

"I won't have it! I won't!"

And a door banged--and grandfather set up a howl.

This happened in the evening. Grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table making a shirt for grandfather and whispering to herself. When the door banged, she said, listening intently:

"O Lord! she has gone up to the lodgers."

At this moment grandfather burst into the kitchen, and rushing up to grandmother, gave her a blow on the head, and hissed as he shook his bruised fist at her:

"Don't you go chattering about things there 's no need to talk about, you old hag!"

"You are an old fool!" retorted grandmother quietly, as she put her knocked-about hair straight. "Do you think I am going to keep quiet? I 'll tell her everything I know about your plots always."

He threw himself upon her and struck at her large head with his fists.

Making no attempt to defend herself, or to strike him back, she said:

"Go on! Beat me, you silly fool! . . . That's right! Hit me!"

I threw cushions and blankets at him from the couch, and the boots which were round the stove, but he was in such a frenzy of rage that he did not heed them. Grandmother fell to the floor and he kicked her head, till he finally stumbled and fell down himself, overturning a pailful of water. He jumped up spluttering and snorting, glanced wildly round, and rushed away to his own room in the attic.

Grandmother rose with a sigh, sat down on the bench, and began to straighten her matted hair. I jumped off the couch, and she said to me in an angry tone:

"Put these pillows and things in their places. The idea! Fancy throwing pillows at any one! . . . And was it any business of yours? As for that old devil, he has gone out of his mind--the fool!"

Then she drew in her breath sharply, wrinkling up her face as she called me to her, and holding her head down said:

"Look! What is it that hurts me so?"

I put her heavy hair aside, and saw that a hairpin had been driven deep into the skin of her head. I pulled it out; but finding another one, my fingers seemed to lose all power of movement and I said: "I think I had better call mother. I am frightened."

She waved me aside.

"What is the matter? . . . Call mother indeed! I 'll call you! . . . Thank God that she has heard and seen nothing of it! As for you-- Now then, get out of my way!"

And with her own flexible lace-worker's fingers she rummaged in her thick mane, while I plucked up sufficient courage to help her pull out two more thick, bent hairpins.

"Does it hurt you?"

"Not much. I 'll heat the bath to-morrow and wash my head. It will be all right then."

Then she began persuasively: "Now, my darling, you won't tell your mother that he beat me, will you? There is enough bad feeling between them without that. So you won't tell, will you?"

"No."

"Now, don't you forget! Come, let us put things straight. . . . There are no bruises on my face, are there? So that's all right; we shall be able to keep it quiet."

Then she set to work to clean the floor, and I exclaimed, from the bottom of my heart:

"You are just like a saint . . . they torture you, and torture you, and you think nothing of it."

"What is that nonsense you are jabbering? Saint--? Where did you ever see one?"

And going on all fours, she kept muttering to herself, while I sat by the side of the stove and thought on ways and means of being revenged on grandfather. It was the first time in my presence that he had beaten grandmother in such a disgusting and terrible manner. His red face and his dishevelled red hair rose before me in the twilight; my heart was boiling over with rage, and I was irritated because I could not think of an adequate punishment.

But a day or two after this, having been sent up to his attic with something for him, I saw him sitting on the floor before an open trunk, looking through some papers; while on a chair lay his favorite calendar--consisting of twelve leaves of thick, gray paper, divided into squares according to the number of days in the month, and in each square was the figure of the saint of the day. Grandfather greatly valued this calendar, and only let me look at it on those rare occasions when he was very pleased with me; and I was conscious of an indefinable feeling as I gazed at the charming little gray figures placed so close together. I knew the lives of some of them too--Kirik and Uliti, Barbara, the great martyr, Panteleimon, and many others; but what I liked most was the sad life of Alexei, the man of God, and the beautiful verses about him. Grandmother often repeated them to me feelingly. One might consider hundreds of such people and console oneself with the thought that they were all martyrs.

But now I made up my mind to tear up the calendar; and when grandfather took a dark blue paper to the window to read it, I snatched up several leaves, and flying downstairs stole the scissors off grandmother's table, and throwing myself on the couch began to cut off the heads of the saints.

When I had beheaded one row I began to feel that it was a pity to destroy the calendar, so I decided to just cut out the squares; but before the second row was in pieces grandfather appeared in the doorway and asked:

"Who gave you permission to take away my calendar?"

Then seeing the squares of paper scattered over the table he picked them up, one after the other, holding each close to his face, then dropping it and picking up another; his jaw went awry, his beard jumped up and down, and he breathed so hard that the papers flew on to the floor.

"What have you done?" he shrieked at length, dragging me towards him by the foot.

I turned head over heels, and grandmother caught me, with grandfather striking her with his fist and screaming:

"I'll kill him!"

At this moment mother appeared, and I took refuge in the corner of the stove, while she, barring his way, caught grandfather's hands, which were being flourished in her face, and pushed him away as she said:

"What is the meaning of this unseemly behavior? Recollect yourself."

Grandfather threw himself on the bench under the window, howling:

"You want to kill me. You are all against me-- every one of you!"

"Are n't you ashamed of yourself?" My mother's voice sounded subdued. "Why all this pretense
^?
"

Grandfather shrieked, and kicked the bench, with his beard sticking out funnily towards the ceiling and his eyes tightly closed; it seemed to me that he really was ashamed before mother, and that he was really pretending--and that was why he kept his eyes shut.

"I 'll gum all these pieces together on some calico, and they will look even better than before," said mother, glancing at the cuttings and the leaves. "Look--they were crumpled and torn; they had been lying about."

She spoke to him just like she used to speak to me in lesson-time when I could not understand something, and he stood up at once, put his shirt and waistcoat straight, in a business-like manner, expectorated and said:

"Do it to-day. I will bring you the other leaves at once."

He went to the door, but he halted on the threshold and pointed a crooked finger at me:

"And he will have to be whipped."

"That goes without saying," agreed mother, bending towards me. "Why did you do it?"

"I did it on purpose. He had better not beat grandmother again, or I 'll cut his beard off."

Grandmother, taking off her torn bodice, said, shaking her head reproachfully:

"Hold your tongue now, as you promised." And she spat on the floor. "May your tongue swell up if you don't keep it still!"

Mother looked at her, and again crossed the kitchen to me.

"When did he beat her?"

"Now, Varvara, you ought to be ashamed to ask him about it. Is it any business of yours?" said grandmother angrily.

Mother went and put her arm round her. "Oh, little mother--my dear little mother!"

"Oh, go away with your 'little mother'! Get away!"

They looked at each other in silence. Grandfather could be heard stamping about in the vestibule.

When she first came home mother had made friends with the merry lady, the soldier's wife, and almost every evening she went up to the front room of the half-house, where she sometimes found people from Betlenga House--beautiful ladies, and officers. Grandfather did not like this at all, and one day, as he was sitting in the kitchen, he shook his spoon at her threateningly and muttered:

"So you are starting your old ways, curse you! We don't get a chance of sleeping till the morning now."

He soon cleared the lodgers out, and when they had gone he brought from somewhere or other two loads of assorted furniture, placed it in the front room, and locked it up with a large padlock.

"We have no need to take lodgers," he said. "I am going to entertain on my own account now."

And so on Sundays and holidays visitors began to appear. There was grandmother's sister, Matrena Sergievna, a shrewish laundress with a large nose, in a striped silk dress and with hair dyed gold; and with her came her sons--Vassili, a long-haired draughtsman, good-natured and gay, who was dressed entirely in gray; and Victor, in all colors of the rainbow, with a head like a horse, and a narrow face covered with freckles, who, even while he was in the vestibule taking off his goloshes, sang in a squeaky voice just like Petrushka's: "Andrei-papa! Andrei-papa!" which occasioned me some surprise and alarm.

Uncle Jaakov used to come too, with his guitar, and accompanied by a bent, bald-headed man--a clock-winder, who wore a long, black frock-coat and had a smooth manner; he reminded me of a monk. He used to sit in a corner with his head on one side, and smiling curiously as he tapped his shaven, clefted chin with his fingers. He was dark, and there was something peculiar in the way he stared at us with his one eye; he said very little, and his favorite expression was: "Pray don't trouble; it doesn't matter in the least."

When I saw him for the first time I suddenly remembered one day long ago, while we were living in New Street, hearing the dull, insistent beating of a drum outside the gate, and seeing a night-cart, surrounded by soldiers and people in black, going from the prison to the square; and seated on a bench in the cart was a man of medium size, with a round cap made of woolen stuff, in chains--and upon his breast a black tablet was displayed, on which there were written some words in large white letters. The man hung his head as if he were reading what was written there, and he shook all over and his chains rattled. So when mother said to the winder: "This is my son," I shrank away from him in terror, and put my hands behind me.

"Pray don't trouble!" he said, and his whole mouth seemed to stretch, in a ghastly fashion, as far as his right ear, as he seized me by the belt, drew me to him, turned me round swiftly and lightly, and let me go.

"He 's all right. He 's a sturdy little chap."

I betook myself to the corner, where there was an armchair upholstered in leather--so large that one could lie in it; and grandfather used to brag about it, and call it "Prince Gruzincki's armchair"--and in this I settled myself and looked on, thinking that grown-up people's ideas of enjoyment were very boring, and that the way the clock-winder's face kept on changing was very strange, and was not calculated to inspire confidence.

It was an oily, flexible face, and it seemed to be melting and always softly on the move; if he smiled, his thick lips shifted to his right cheek, and his little nose turned that way too, and looked like a meat pasty on a plate. His great projecting ears moved strangely too, one being lifted every time he raised his eyebrow over his seeing eye, and the other moving in unison with his cheek-bone; and when he sneezed it seemed as if it were as easy to cover his nose with them as with the palm of his hand. Sometimes he sighed, and thrust out his dark tongue, round as a pestle, and licked his thick, moist lips with a circular movement. This did not strike me as being funny, but only as something wonderful, which I could not help looking at.

They drank tea with rum in it, which smelt like burnt onion tops; they drank liqueurs made by grandmother, some yellow like gold, some black like tar, some green; they ate curds, and buns made of butter, eggs and honey; they perspired, and panted, and lavished praises on grandmother; and when they had finished eating, they settled themselves, looking flushed and puffy, decorously in their chairs, and languidly asked Uncle Jaakov to play.

He bent over his guitar and struck up a disagreeable, irritating song:

"Oh, we have been out on the spree, 
 The town rang with our voices free, 
 And to a lady from Kazan 
 We 've told our story, every man." 

I thought this was a miserable song, and grandmother said:

"Why don't you play something else, Jaasha?--a real song! Do you remember, Matrena, the sort of songs we used to sing?"