My Childhood (24 page)

"Iwo-on't!"

He awoke with a start and ran out of the class-room without ceremony. He was mercilessly laughed at for this; and the next day, when we were in the passage by Cyenvi Square, on our way to school, he came to a halt saying:

"You go on ... I am not coming ... I would rather go for a walk."

He squatted on his heels, carelessly dug his bundle of books into the snow, and went off. It was a clear January day, and the silver rays of the sun fell all round me. I envied my cousin very much, but, hardening my heart, I went on to school. I did not want to grieve my mother. The books which Sascha buried disappeared, of course, so he had a valid reason for not going to school the next day; but on the third day his conduct was brought to grandfather's notice. We were called up for judgment; in the kitchen grandfather, grandmother, and mother sat at the table and cross-examined us--and I shall never forget how comically Sascha answered grandfather's questions.

"Why did n't you go to school?"

"I forgot where it was."

"Forgot?"

"Yes. I looked and looked--"

"But you went with Alexei; he remembered where it was."

"And I lost him."

"Lost Lexei?"

"Yes."

"How did that happen?"

Sascha reflected a moment, and then said, drawing in his breath:

"There was a snowstorm, and you could n't see anything."

They all smiled--and the atmosphere began to clear; even Sascha smiled cautiously. But grandfather said maliciously, showing his teeth:

"But you could have caught hold of his arm or his belt, could n't you?"

"I did catch hold of them, but the wind tore them away," explained Sascha.

He spoke in a lazy, despondent tone, and I listened uncomfortably to this unnecessary, clumsy lie, amazed at his obstinacy.

We were thrashed, and a former fireman, an old man with a broken arm, was engaged to take us to school, and to watch that Sascha did not turn aside from the road of learning. But it was no use. The next day, as soon as my cousin reached the causeway, he stooped suddenly, and pulling off one of his high boots threw it a long way from him; then he took off the other and threw it in the opposite direction, and in his stockinged feet ran across the square. The old man, breathing hard, picked up the boots, and thereupon, terribly flustered, took me home.

All that day grandfather, grandmother, and my mother searched the town for the runaway, and it was evening before they found him in the bar at Tchirkov's Tavern, entertaining the public by his dancing. They took him home, and actually did not beat the shaking, stubborn, silent lad; but as he lay beside me in the loft, with his legs up and the soles of his feet scraping against the ceiling, he said softly:

"My stepmother does not love me, nor my father. Grandfather does not love me either; why should I live with them? So I shall ask grandmother to tell me where the robbers live, and I shall run away to them . . . then you will understand, all of you. . . . Why should n't we run away together?"

I could not run away with him, for in those days I had a work before me--I had resolved to be an officer with a large, light beard, and for that study was indispensable. When I told my cousin of my plan, he agreed with me, on reflection.

"That's a good idea too. By the time you are an officer I shall be a robber-chief, and you will have to capture me, and one of us will have to kill the other, or take him prisoner. I shan't kill you."

"Nor I you."

On that point we were agreed.

Then grandmother came in, and climbing on to the stove, glanced up at us and said:

"Well, little mice? E--ekh! Poor orphans! . . . Poor little mites!"

Having pitied us, she began to abuse Sascha's stepmother--fat Aunt Nadejda, daughter of the inn-keeper, going on to abuse stepmothers in general, and, apropos, told us the story of the wise hermit Iona, and how when he was but a lad he was judged, with his stepmother, by an act of God. His father was a fisherman of the White Lake:

"By his young wife his ruin was wrought, 
 A potent liquor to him she brought, 

  Made of herbs which bring sleep. 
She laid him, slumbering, in a bark 
Of oak, like a grave, so close and dark, 

  And plied the maple oars. 
In the lake's center she dug a hole, 
For there she had planned, in that dark pool, 

To hide her vile witch deed.

Bent double she rocked from side to side,

And the frail craft o'erturned--that witch bride!

  And her husband sank deep. 
And the witch swam quickly to the shore 
And fell to the earth with wailings sore, 

  And womanly laments. 
The good folk all, believing her tale, 
Wept with the disconsolate female, 

  And in bitterness cried: 
'Oi! As wife thy life was all too brief! 
O'erwhelmed art thou by wifely grief; 

  But life is God's affair. 
Death too He sends when it doth please Him.' 
Stepson Ionushka alone looked grim, 

  Her tears not believing. 
With his little hand upon his heart 
He swiftly at her these words did dart: 

  'Oi! Fateful stepmother! 
Oi! Artful night-bird, born to deceive! 
Those tears of yours I do not believe! 

   It is joy you feel not pain. 
But we 'll ask our Lord, my charge to prove, 
And the aid of all the saints above. 

  Let some one take a knife, 
And throw it up to the cloudless sky; 
Blameless you, to me the knife will fly. 

If I am right, you die!' 
   * **..**0 

The stepmother turned her baleful gaze 
On him, and with hate her eyes did blaze 

  As she rose to her feet. 
And with vigor replied to the attack 
Of her stepson, nor words did she lack. 

'Oh! creature without sense!

Abortion you!--fit for rubbish heap! 
By this invention, what do you reap? 

  Answer you cannot give!' 
The good folk looked on, but nothing said; 
Of this dark business they were afraid. 

  Sad and pensive they stood; 
Then amongst themselves they held a debate, 
And a fisherman old and sedate 

  Bowing, advanced and said: 
'In my right hand, good people, give me 
A steel knife, which I will throw, and ye 

  Shall see on whom it falls.' 
A knife to his hand was their reply. 
High above his gray head, to the sky, 

  The sharp blade he did fling. 
Like a bird, up in the air it went; 
Vainly they waited for its descent, 

  The crystal height scanning. 
Their hats they doffed, and closer pressed they stood, 
Silent; yea, Night herself seemed to brood; 

  But the knife did not fall. 
The ruby dawn rose over the lake, 
The stepmother, flushed, did courage take 

  And scornfully did smile. 
When like a swallow the knife did dart 
To earth, and fixed itself in her heart. 

Down on their knees the people did fall 
Praising God Who is Ruler of All: 

  'Thou are just, O God!' 
Iona, the fisherman, did take, 
And of him a hermit did make. 

Far away by the bright River Kerjentza

In a cell almost invisible from the town Kiteja." *

The next day I woke up covered with red spots, and this was the beginning of small-pox.

They put me up in the back attic, and there I lay for a long time, blind, with my hands and feet tightly bandaged, living through horrible nightmares, in one of which I nearly died. No one but grandmother came near me, and she fed me with a spoon as if I were a baby, and told me stories, a fresh one every time, from her endless store.

One evening, when I was convalescent, and lay without bandages, except for my hands, which were tied up to prevent me from scratching my face, grandmother, for some reason or other, had not come at her usual time, which alarmed me; and all of a sudden I saw her. She was lying outside the door on the dusty floor of the attic, face downwards, with her arms outspread, and her neck half sawed through, like Uncle Peter's; while from the corner, out of the dusty twilight, there moved slowly towards her a great cat, with its green eyes greedily open. I sprang out of bed, bruising my legs and shoulders against the window-frame, and jumped down into the yard into a snowdrift. It happened to be an evening when mother had visitors, so no one heard the smashing of the glass, or the breaking of the window-frame, and I had to lie in the snow for some time. I had broken no bones, but I had dislocated my shoulder and cut myself very much with the broken glass, and I had lost the use of my legs, and for three months I lay utterly unable to move. I lay still and listened, and thought how noisy the house had become, how often they banged the doors downstairs, and what a lot of people seemed to be coming and going.

¹
In the year '90 in the village of Kolinpanovka, in the Government of Tambov, and the district Borisoglebsk, I heard another version of this legend, in which the knife kills the stepson who has calumniated his stepmother.

Heavy snowstorms swept over the roof; the wind came and went resoundingly outside the door, sang a funereal song down the chimney, and set the dampers rattling; by day the rooks cawed, and in the quiet night the doleful howling of wolves reached my ears--such was the music under whose influence my heart developed. Later on shy spring peeped into the window with the radiant eyes of the March sun, timidly and gently at first, but growing bolder and warmer every day; she-cats sang and howled on the roof and in the loft; the rustle of spring penetrated the very walls-- the crystal icicles broke, the half-thawed snow fell off the stable-roof, and the bells began to give forth a sound less clear than they gave in winter. When grandmother came near me her words were more often impregnated with the odor of vodka, which grew stronger every day, until at length she began to bring a large white teapot with her and hide it under my bed, saying with a wink:

"Don't you say anything to that grandfather of ours, will you, darling?"

"Why do you drink?"

"Never mind! When you are grown-up you'll know."

She pulled at the spout of the teapot, wiped her lips with her sleeve, and smiled sweetly as she" asked:

"Well, my little gentleman, what do you want me to tell you about this evening?"

"About my father."

"Where shall I begin?"

I reminded her, and her speech flowed on like a melodious stream for a long time.

She had begun to tell me about my father of her own accord one day when she had come to me, nervous, sad, and tired, saying:

"I have had a dream about your father. I thought I saw him coming across the fields, whistling, and followed by a piebald dog with its tongue hanging out. For some reason I have begun to dream about Maxim Savatyevitch very often ... it must mean that his soul is not at rest . . ."

For several evenings in succession she told me my father's history, which was interesting, as all her stories were.

My father was the son of a soldier who had worked his way up to be an officer and was banished to Siberia for cruelty to his subordinates; and there--somewhere in Siberia--my father was born. He had an unhappy life, and at a very early age he used to run away from home. Once grandfather set the dogs to track him down in the forest, as if he were a hare; another time, having caught him, he beat him so unmercifully that the neighbors took the child away and hid him.

"Do they always beat children?" I asked, and grandmother answered quietly:

"Always."

My father's mother died early, and when he was nine years old grandfather also died, and he was taken by a cross-maker, who entered him on the Guild of the town of Perm and began to teach him his trade; but my father ran away from him, and earned his living by leading blind people to the fairs. When he was sixteen he came to Nijni and obtained work with a joiner who was a contractor for the Kolchin steamboats. By the time he was twenty he was a skilled carpenter, upholsterer and decorator. The workshop in which he was employed was next door to grandfather's house in Kovalikh Street.

"The fences were not high, and certain people were not backward," said grandmother, laughing. "So one day, when Varia and I were picking raspberries in the garden, who should get over the fence but your father! ... I was frightened, foolishly enough; but there he went amongst the apple trees, a fine-looking fellow, in a white shirt, and plush breeches . . . barefooted and hatless, with long hair bound with leather bands. That's the way he came courting. When I saw him for the first time through the window, I said to myself: 'That's a nice lad!' So when he came close to me now I asked him:

"'Why do you come out of your way like this, young man?'

"And he fell on his knees. 'Akulina,' he says, 'Ivanovna! . . . because my whole heart is here . . . with Varia. Help us, for God's sake! We want to get married.'

"At this I was stupefied and my tongue refused to speak. I looked, and there was your mother, the rogue, hiding behind an apple tree, all red--as red as the raspberries--and making signs to him; but there were tears in her eyes.

"'Oh, you rogues!' I cried. 'How have you managed all this? Are you in your senses, Varvara? And you, young man,' I said, 'think what you are doing! Do you intend to get your way by force?'

"At that time grandfather was rich, for he had not given his children their portions, and he had four houses of his own, and money, and he was ambitious; not long before that they had given him a laced hat and a uniform because he had been head of the Guild for nine years without a break--and he was proud in those days. I said to them what it was my duty to say, but all the time I trembled for fear and felt very sorry for them too; they had both become so gloomy. Then said your father: