My Childhood (3 page)

"Papa!" my mother cried in a hoarse, loud voice, as she threw herself into his arms; but he, taking her face in his little red hands and hastily patting her cheeks, cried:

"Now, silly! What's the matter with you? . . ."

Grandmother embraced and kissed them all at once, turning round and round like a peg-top; she pushed me towards them, saying quickly:

"Now--make haste! This is Uncle Michael, this is Jaakov, this is Aunt Natalia, these are two brothers both called Sascha, and their sister Katerina. This is all our family. Is n't it a large one?"

Grandfather said to her:

"Are you quite well, Mother?" and they kissed each other three times.

He then drew me from the dense mass of people, and laying his hand on my head, asked:

"And who may you be?"

"I am the Astrakhan boy from the cabin."

"What on earth is he talking about?" Grandfather turned to my mother, but without waiting for an answer, shook me and said: "You are a chip of the old block. Get into the boat."

Having landed, the crowd of people wended its way up the hill by a road paved with rough cobblestones between two steep slopes covered with trampled grass.

Grandfather and mother went in front of us all. He was a head shorter than she was, and walked with little hurried steps; while she, looking down on him from her superior height, appeared literally to float beside him. After them walked dark, sleek-haired Uncle Michael, wizened like grandfather, bright and curly-headed Jaakov, some fat women in brightly colored dresses, and six children, all older than myself and all very quiet. I was with grandmother and little Aunt Natalia. Pale, blue-eyed and stout, she frequently stood still, panting and whispering:

"Oh, I can't go any farther!"

"Why did they trouble you to come?" grumbled grandmother angrily. "They are a silly lot!"

I did not like either the grown-up people nor the children; I felt myself to be a stranger in their midst --even grandmother had somehow become estranged and distant.

Most of all I disliked my uncle; I felt at once that he was my enemy, and I was conscious of a certain feeling of cautious curiosity towards him.

We had now arrived at the end of our journey.

At the very top, perched on the right slope, stood the first building in the street--a squat, one-storied house, decorated with dirty pink paint, with a narrow overhanging roof and bow-windows. Looked at from the street it appeared to be a large house, but the interior, with its gloomy, tiny rooms, was cramped. Everywhere, as on the landing-stage, angry people strove together, and a vile smell pervaded the whole place.

I went out into the yard. That also was unpleasant. It was strewn with large, wet cloths and lumbered with tubs, all containing muddy water, of the same hue, in which other cloths lay soaking. In the corner of a half-tumbled-down shed the logs burned brightly in a stove, upon which something was boiling or baking, and an unseen person uttered these strange words:

"Santaline, fuchsin, vitriol!"

CHAPTER II

THEN began and flowed on with astonishing rapidity an intense, varied, inexpressibly strange life. It reminded me of a crude story, well told by a good-natured but irritatingly truthful genius. Now, in recalling the past, I myself find it difficult to believe, at this distance of time, that things really were as they were, and I have longed to dispute or reject the facts--
)(
the cruelty of the drab existence of an unwelcome relation is too painful to contemplate. But truth is stronger than pity, and besides, I am writing not about myself but about that narrow, stifling environment of \ unpleasant impressions in which lived--aye, and to this day lives--the average Russian of this class.

My grandfather's house simply seethed with mutual hostility; all the grown people were infected and even the children were inoculated with it. I had learned, from overhearing grandmother's conversation, that my mother arrived upon the very day when her brothers demanded the distribution of the property from their father. Her unexpected return made their desire for this all the keener and stronger, because they were afraid that my mother would claim
the
dowry intended for her, but withheld by my grandfather because she had married secretly and against his wish. My uncles considered that this dowry ought to be divided amongst them all. Added to this, they had been quarreling violently for a long time among themselves as to who should open a workshop in the town, or on the Oka in the village of Kunavin.'

One day, very shortly after our arrival, a quarrel broke out suddenly at dinner-time. My uncles started to their feet and, leaning across the table, began to shout and yell at grandfather, snarling and shaking themselves like dogs; and grandfather, turning very red, rapped on the table with a spoon and cried in a piercing tone of voice, like the crowing of a cock: "I will turn you out of doors!"

With her face painfully distorted, grandmother said: "Give them what they ask, Father; then you will have some peace."

"Be quiet, simpleton!" shouted my grandfather with flashing eyes; and it was wonderful, seeing how small he was, that he could yell with such deafening effect.

My mother rose from the table, and going calmly to the window, turned her back upon us all.

Suddenly Uncle Michael struck his brother on the face with the back of his hand. The latter, with a howl of rage, grappled with him; both rolled on the floor growling, gasping for breath and abusing each other. The children began to cry, and my Aunt Natalia, who was with child, screamed wildly; my mother seized her round the body and dragged her somewhere out of the way; the lively little nursemaid, Eugenia, drove the children out of the kitchen; chairs were knocked down; the young, broad-shouldered foreman, Tsiganok, sat on Uncle Michael's back, while the head of the works, Gregory Ivanovitch, a bald-headed, bearded man with colored spectacles, calmly bound up my uncle's hands with towels.

Turning his head and letting his thin, straggly, black beard trail on the floor, Uncle Michael cursed horribly, and grandfather, running round the table, exclaimed bitterly: "And these are brothers! . . . Blood relations! . . . Shame on you!"

At the beginning of the quarrel I had jumped on to the stove in terror; and thence, with painful amazement, I had watched grandmother as she washed Uncle Jaakov's battered face in a small basin of water, while he cried and stamped his feet, and she said in a sad voice: "Wicked creatures! You are nothing better than a family of wild beasts. When will you come to your senses?"

Grandfather, dragging his torn shirt over his shoulder, called out to her: "So you have brought wild animals into the world, eh, old woman?"

When Uncle Jaakov went out, grandmother retired to a comer and, quivering with grief, prayed: "Holy Mother of God, bring my children to their senses."

Grandfather stood beside her, and, glancing at the table, on which everything was upset or spilled, said softly:

"When you think of them, Mother, and then of the little one they pester Varia about . . . who has the best nature?"

"Hold your tongue, for goodness' sake! Take off that shirt and I will mend it. . . ." And laying the palms of her hands on his head, grandmother kissed his forehead; and he--so small compared to her-- pressing his face against her shoulder, said:

"We shall have to give them their shares, Mother, that is plain."

"Yes, Father, it will have to be done."

Then they talked for a long time; amicably at first, but it was not long before grandfather began to scrape his feet on the floor like a cock before a fight, and holding up a threatening finger to grandmother, said in a fierce whisper:

"I know you! You love them more than me. . . . And what is your Mischka?--a Jesuit! And Jaaschka --a Freemason! And they live on me. . . . Hangers-on! That is all they are."

Uneasily turning on the stove, I knocked down an iron, which fell with a crash like a thunder-clap.

Grandfather jumped up on the step, dragged me down, and stared at me as if he now saw me for the first time.

"Who put you on the stove? Your mother?"

"I got up there by myself."

"You are lying!"

"No I 'm not. I did get up there by myself. I was frightened."

He pushed me away from him, lightly striking me on the head with the palm of his hand.

"Just like your father! Get out of my sight!"

And I was only too glad to run out of the kitchen.

I was very well aware that grandfather's shrewd, sharp green eyes followed me everywhere, and I was afraid of him. I remember how I always wished to hide myself from that fierce glance. It seemed to me that grandfather was malevolent; he spoke to every one mockingly and offensively, and, being provocative, did his best to put every one else out of temper.

"Ugh!
You!"
he exclaimed frequently.

The long-drawn-out sound "U-gh!" always reminds me of a sensation of misery and chill. In the recreation hour, the time for evening tea, when he, my uncles and the workmen came into the kitchen from the workshop weary, with their hands stained with santaline and burnt by sulphuric acid, their hair bound with linen bands, all looking like the dark-featured icon in the corner of the kitchen--in that hour of dread my grandfather used to sit opposite to me, arousing the envy of the other grandchildren by speaking to me oftener than to them. Everything about him was trenchant and to the point. His heavy satin waistcoat embroidered with silk was old; his much-scrubbed shirt of colored cotton was crumpled; great patches flaunted themselves on the knees of his trousers; and yet he 6eemed to be dressed with more cleanliness and more refinement than his sons, who wore false shirtfronts and silk neckties.

Some days after our arrival he set me to learn the prayers. All the other children were older than myself, and were already being taught to read and write by the clerk of Uspenski Church. Timid Aunt Natalia used to teach me softly. She was a woman with a childlike countenance, and such transparent eyes that it seemed to me that, looking into them, one might see what was inside her head. I loved to look into those eyes of hers without shifting my gaze and without blinking; they used to twinkle as she turned her head away and said very softly, almost in a whisper: "That will do. . . . Now please say 'Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. . . .'" And if I asked, "What does 'hallowed be Thy name' mean?" she would glance round timidly and admonish me thus: "Don't ask questions. It is wrong. Just say after me 'Our Father . . .'"

Her words troubled me. Why was it wrong to ask questions? The words "hallowed be Thy name" acquired a mysterious significance in my mind, and I purposely mixed them up in every possible way.

But my aunt, pale and almost exhausted, patiently cleared her throat, which was always husky, and said, "No, that is not right. Just say 'hallowed be Thy name.' It is plain enough." "x But my aunt, pale and almost exhausted, patiently irritated me, and hindered me from remembering the prayer.

One day my grandfather inquired:

"Well, Oleysha, what have you been doing to-day? Playing? The bruises on your forehead told me as much. Bruises are got cheaply. And how about 'Our Father'? Have you learnt it?"

"He has a very bad memory," said my aunt softly.

Grandfather smiled as if he were glad, lifting his sandy eyebrows. "And what of it? He must be whipped; that's all."

And again he turned to me.

"Did your father ever whip you?"

As I did not know what he was talking about, I was silent, but my mother replied:

"No, Maxim never beat him, and what is more, forbade me to do so."

"And why, may I ask?"

"He said that beating is not education."

"He was a fool about everything--that Maxim. May God forgive me for speaking so of the dead!" exclaimed grandfather distinctly and angrily. He saw at once that these words enraged me. "What is that sullen face for?" he asked. "Ugh! . . .
Tou! .
. ." And smoothing down his reddish, silverstreaked hair, he added: "And this very Saturday I am going to give Sascha a hiding."

"What is a hiding?" I asked.

They all laughed, and grandfather said: "Wait a bit, and you shall see."

In secret I pondered over the word "hiding." Apparently it had the same meaning as to whip and beat. I had seen people beat horses, dogs and cats, and in Astrakhan the soldiers used to beat the Persians; but I had never before seen any one beat little children. Yet here my uncles hit their own children over the head and shoulders, and they bore it without resentment, merely rubbing the injured part; and if I asked them whether they were hurt, they always answered bravely:

"No, not a bit."

Then there was the famous story of the thimble. In the evenings, from tea-time to supper-time, my uncles and the head workman used to sew portions of dyed material into one piece, to which they affixed tickets. Wishing to play a trick on half-blind Gregory, Uncle Michael had told his nine-year-old nephew to make his thimble red-hot in the candle-flame. Sascha heated the thimble in the snuffers, made it absolutely red-hot, and contriving, without attracting attention, to place it close to Gregory's hand, hid himself by the stove; but as luck would have it, grandfather himself came in at that very moment and, sitting down to work, slipped his finger into the red-hot thimble.

Hearing the tumult, I ran into the kitchen, and I shall never forget how funny grandfather looked nursing his burnt finger as he jumped about and shrieked:

"Where is the villain who played this trick?"

Uncle Michael, doubled up under the table, snatched up the thimble and blew upon it; Gregory unconcernedly went on sewing, while the shadows played on his enormous bald patch. Then Uncle Jaakov rushed in, and, hiding himself in the corner by the stove, stood there quietly laughing; grandmother busied herself with grating up raw potatoes.

"Sascha Jaakov did it!" suddenly exclaimed Uncle Michael.

"Liar!" cried Jaakov, darting out from behind the stove.

But his son, from one of the comers, wept and wailed:

"Papa! don't believe him. He showed me how to do it himself."