My Childhood (23 page)

Spreading out her rustling frock, the laundress reminded her:

"There 's a new fashion in singing now, Matushka."

Uncle looked at grandmother, blinking as if she were a long way off, and went on obstinately producing those melancholy sounds and foolish words.

Grandfather was carrying on a mysterious conversation with the clock-winder, pointing his finger at him; and the latter, raising his eyebrow, looked over to mother's side of the room and shook his head, and his mobile face assumed a new and indescribable shape.

Mother always sat between the Sergievnas, and as she talked quietly and gravely to Vassili, she sighed:

"Ye--es! That wants thinking about."

And Victor smiled the smile of one who has eaten to satiety, and scraped his feet on the floor; then he suddenly burst shrilly into song:

"Andrei-papa! Andrei-papa!"

They all stopped talking in surprise and looked at him; while the laundress explained in a tone of pride:

"He got that from the theater; they sing it there."

There were two or three evenings like this, made memorable by their oppressive dullness, and then the winder appeared in the daytime, one Sunday after High Mass. I was sitting with mother in her room helping her to mend a piece of torn beaded embroidery, when the door flew open unexpectedly and grandmother rushed into the room with a frightened face, saying in a loud whisper: "Varia, he has come!" and disappeared immediately.

Mother did not stir, not an eyelash quivered; but the door was soon opened again, and there stood grandfather on the threshold.

"Dress yourself, Varvara, and come along!"

She sat still, and without looking at him said:

"Come where?"

"Come along, for God's sake! Don't begin arguing. He is a good, peaceable man, in a good position, and he will make a good father for Lexei."

He spoke in an unusually important manner, stroking his sides with the palms of his hands the while; but his elbows trembled, as they were bent backwards, exactly as if his hands wanted to be stretched out in front of him, and he had a struggle to keep them back.

Mother interrupted him calmly.

"I tell you that it can't be done."

Grandfather stepped up to her, stretching out his hands just as if he were blind, and bending over her, bristling with rage, he said, with a rattle in his throat:

"Come along, or I 'll drag you to him-- by the hair."

"You'll drag me to him, will you?" asked mother, standing up. She turned pale and her eyes were painfully drawn together as she began rapidly to take off her bodice and skirt, and finally, wearing nothing but her chemise, went up to grandfather and said:

"Now, drag me to him."

He ground his teeth together and shook his fist in her face:

"Varvara! Dress yourself at once!"

Mother pushed him aside with her hand, and took hold of the door handle.

"Well? Come along!"

"Curse you!" whispered grandfather.

"I am not afraid--come along!"

She opened the door, but grandfather seized her by her chemise and fell on his knees, whispering:

"Varvara! You devil! You will ruin us. Have you no shame?"

And he wailed softly and plaintively:

"Mo--ther! Mo--ther!"

Grandmother was already barring mother's way; waving her hands in her face as if she were a hen, she now drove her away from the door, muttering through her closed teeth:

"Varka! You fool! What are you doing? Go away, you shameless hussy!"

She pushed her into the room and secured the door with the hook; and then she bent over grandfather, helping him up with one hand and threatening him with the other.

"Ugh! You old devil!"

She sat him on the couch, and he went down all of a heap, like a rag doll, with his mouth open and his head waggling.

"Dress yourself at once, you!" cried grandmother to mother.

Picking her dress up from the floor, mother said:

"But I am not going to him--do you hear?"

Grandmother pushed me away from the couch.

"Go and fetch a basin of water. Make haste!"

She spoke in a low voice, which was almost a whisper, and with a calm, assured manner.

I ran into the vestibule. I could hear the heavy tread of measured footsteps in the front room of the half-house, and mother's voice came after me from her room:

"I shall leave this place to-morrow!"

I went into the kitchen and sat down by the window as if I were in a dream.

Grandfather groaned and shrieked; grandmother muttered; then there was the sound of a door being banged, and all was silent--oppressively so.

Remembering what I had been sent for, I scooped up some water in a brass basin and went into the vestibule. From the front room came the clock-winder with his head bent; he was smoothing his fur cap with his hand, and quacking. Grandmother with her hands folded over her stomach was bowing to his back, and saying softly:

"You know what it is yourself--you can't be forced to be nice to people."

He halted on the threshold, and then stepped into the yard; and grandmother, trembling all over, crossed herself and did not seem to know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

"What is the matter?" I asked, running to her.

She snatched the basin from me, splashing the water over my legs, and cried:

"So this is where you come for water. Bolt the door!" And she went back into mother's room; and I went into the kitchen again and listened to them sighing and groaning and muttering, just as if they were moving a load, which was too heavy for them, from one place to another.

It was a brilliant day. Through the ice-covered window-panes peeped the slanting beams of the winter sun; on the table, which was laid for dinner, was the pewter dinner-service; a goblet containing red kvass, and another with some dark-green vodka made by grandfather from betony and St. John's wort, gleamed dully. Through the thawed places on the window could be seen the snow on the roofs, dazzlingly bright and sparkling like silver on the posts of the fence. Hanging against the window-frame in cages, my birds played in the sunshine: the tame siskins chirped gaily, the robins uttered their sharp, shrill twitter, and the goldfinch took a bath.

But this radiant, silver day, in which every sound was clear and distinct, brought no joy with it, for it seemed out of place--everything seemed out of place. I was seized with a desire to set the birds free, and was about to take down the cages when grandmother rushed in, clapping her hands to her sides, and flew to the stove, calling herself names.

"Curse you! Bad luck to you for an old fool, Akulina!"

She drew a pie out of the oven, touched the crust with her finger, and spat on the floor out of sheer exasperation.

"There you are--absolutely dried up! It is your own fault that it is burnt. Uch! Devil! A plague upon all your doings! Why don't you keep your eyes open, owl? . . . You are as unlucky as bad money!"

And she cried, and blew on the pie, and turned it over, first on this side, then on that, tapping the dry crust with her fingers, upon which her large tears splashed forlornly.

When grandfather and mother came into the kitchen she banged the pie on the table so hard that all the plates jumped.

"Look at that! That's your doing . . . there's no crust for you, top or bottom!"

Mother, looking quite happy and peaceful, kissed her, and told her not to get angry about it; while grandfather, looking utterly crushed and weary, sat down to table and unfolded his serviette, blinking, with the sun in his eyes, and muttered:

"That will do. It does n't matter. We have eaten plenty of pies that were not spoilt. When the Lord buys He pays for a year in minutes . . . and allows no interest. Sit down, do, Varia! . . . and have done with it."

He behaved just as if he had gone out of his mind, and talked all dinner-time about God, and about ungodly Ahab, and said what a hard lot a father's was, until grandmother interrupted him by saying angrily:

"You eat your dinner . . . that's the best thing you can do!"

Mother joked all the time, and her clear eyes sparkled.

"So you were frightened just now?" she asked, giving me a push.

No, I had not been so frightened then, but now I felt uneasy and bewildered. As the meal dragged out to the weary length which was usual on Sundays and holidays, it seemed to me that these could not be the same people who, only half an hour ago, were shouting at each other, on the verge of fighting, and bursting out into tears and sobs. I could not believe, that is to say, that they were in earnest now, and that they were not ready to weep all the time. But those tears and cries, and the scenes which they inflicted upon one another, happened so often, and died away so quickly, that I began to get used to them, and they gradually ceased to excite me or to cause me heartache.

Much later I realized that Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow--to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy.

Amidst their endless week-days, grief makes a holiday, and a fire is an amusement--a scratch is an ornament to an empty face.

CHAPTER XI

AFTER this incident mother suddenly asserted herself, made a firm stand, and was soon mistress of the house, while grandfather, grown thoughtful and quiet, and quite unlike himself, became a person of no account.

He hardly ever went out of the house, but sat all day up in the attic reading, by stealth, a book called "The Writings of My Father." He kept this book in a trunk under lock and key, and one day I saw him wash his hands before he took it out . It was a dumpy, fat book bound in red leather; on the dark blue title page a figured inscription in different colored inks flaunted itself: "To worthy Vassili Kashmirin, in gratitude, and sincere remembrance"; and underneath were written some strange surnames, while the frontispiece depicted a bird on the wing.

Carefully opening the heavy binding, grandfather used to put on his silver-rimmed spectacles, and gazing at the book, move his nose up and down for a long time, in order to get his spectacles at the right angle.

I asked him more than once what book it was that he was reading, but he only answered in an impressive tone:

"Never mind. . . . Wait a bit, and when I die it will come to you. I will leave you my racoon pelisse too."

He began to speak to mother more gently, but less often; listening attentively to her speeches with his eyes glittering like Uncle Peter's, and waving her aside as he muttered:

"There! that's enough. Do what you like . . ."

In that trunk of his lay many wonderful articles of attire--skirts of silken material, padded satin jackets, sleeveless silk gowns, cloth of woven silver and headbands sewn with pearls, brightly colored lengths of material and handkerchiefs, with necklaces of colored stones. He took them all, panting as he went, to mother's room and laid them about on the chairs and tables--clothes were mother's delight--and he said to her:

"In our young days dress was more beautiful and much richer than it is now. Dress was richer, and people seemed to get on better together. But these times are past and cannot be called back . . . well, here you are; take them, and dress yourself up."

One day mother went to her room for a short time, and when she reappeared she was dressed in a dark blue sleeveless robe, embroidered with gold, with a pearl head-band; and making a low obeisance to grandfather, she asked:

"Well, how does this suit you, my lord Father?" Grandfather murmured something, and brightening wonderfully, walked round her, holding up his hands, and said indistinctly, just as if he were talking in his sleep:

"Ech! Varvara! ... if you had plenty of money you would have the best people round you ...!"

Mother lived now in two front rooms in the halfhouse, and had a great many visitors, the most frequent being the brothers Maximov: Peter, a well-set-up, handsome officer with a large, light beard and blue eyes --the very one before whom grandfather thrashed me for spitting on the old gentleman's head; and Eugen, also tall and thin, with a pale face and a small, pointed beard. His large eyes were like plums, and he was dressed in a green coat with gold buttons and gold letters on his narrow shoulders. He often tossed his head lightly, throwing his long, wavy hair back from his high, smooth forehead, and smiled indulgently; and whenever he told some story in his husky voice, he invariably began his speech with these insinuating words: "Shall I tell you how it appears to me?" Mother used to listen to him with twinkling eyes, and frequently interrupted him laughingly with: "You are a baby, Eugen Vassilovitch--forgive me for saying so!"

And the officer, slapping his broad palms on his knees, would cry:

"A queer sort of baby!"

The Christmas holidays were spent in noisy gaiety, and almost every evening people came to see mother in full dress; or she put on gala dress--better than any of them wore--and went out with her guests.

Every time she left the house, in company with her gaily attired guests, it seemed to sink into the earth, and a terrifying silence seemed to creep into every corner of it. Grandmother flapped about the room like an old goose, putting everything straight. Grandfather stood with his back against the warm tiles of the stove, and talked to himself.

"Well . . . that will do . . . very good! . . . We 'll have a look and see what family . . ."

After the Christmas holidays mother sent Sascha, Uncle Michael's son, and me to school. Sascha's father had married again, and from the very first the stepmother had taken a dislike to her stepson, and had begun to beat him; so at grandmother's entreaty, grandfather had taken Sascha to live in his house. We went to school for a month, and all I learned, as far as I remember, was that when I was asked "What is your surname?" I must not reply "Pyeshkov" simply, but "My surname is Pyeshkov." And also that I must not say to the teacher: "Don't shout at me, my dear fellow, I am not afraid of you!"

At first I did not like school, but my cousin was very pleased with it in the beginning, and easily made friends for himself; but once he fell asleep during a lesson, and suddenly called out in his sleep: