My Childhood (5 page)

Several times people put their heads in at the door to call him, but each time I begged him not to go.

And he laughingly waved them away, saying, "Wait a bit."

He stayed with me and told me stories until it was almost dark, and when, after an affectionate farewell, he left me, I had learned that he was neither malevolent nor formidable. It brought the tears into my eyes to remember that it was he who had so cruelly beaten me, but I could not forget it.

This visit of my grandfather opened the door to others, and from morning till night there was always somebody sitting on my bed, trying to amuse me; I remember that this was not always either cheering or pleasant.

Oftener than any of them came my grandmother, who slept in the same bed with me. But it was Tsiganok who left the clearest impression on me in those days. He used to appear in the evenings--squarebuilt, broad-chested, curly headed, dressed in his best clothes--a gold-embroidered shirt, plush breeches, boots squeaking like a harmonium. His hair was glossy, his squinting, merry eyes gleamed under his thick eyebrows, and his white teeth under the shadow of his young mustache; his shirt glowed softly as if reflecting the red light of the image-lamp.

"Look here!" he said, turning up his sleeve and displaying his bare arm to the elbow. It was covered with red scars. "Look how swollen it is; and it was worse yesterday--it was very painful. When your grandfather flew into a rage and I saw that he was going to flog you, I put my arm in the way, thinking that the rod would break, and then while he was looking for another your grandmother or your mother could take you away and hide you. I am an old bird at the game, my child."

He laughed gently and kindly, and glancing again at the swollen arm, went on:

"I was so sorry for you that I thought I should choke. It seemed such a shame! . . . But he lashed away at you!"

Snorting and tossing his head like a horse, he went on speaking about the affair. This childish simplicity seemed to draw him closer to me. I told him that I loved him very much, and he answered with a simplicity which always lives in my memory.

"And I love you too! That is why I let myself be hurt--because I love you. Do you think I would have done it for any one else? I should be making a fool of myself."

Later on he gave me whispered instructions, glancing frequently at the door. "Next time he beats you don't try to get away from him, and don't struggle. It hurts twice as much if you resist. If you let yourself go he will deal lightly with you. Be limp and soft, and don't scowl at him. Try and remember this; it is good advice."

"Surely he won't whip me again!" I exclaimed.

"Why, of course!" replied Tsiganok calmly. "Of course he will whip you again, and often too!"

"But why?"

"Because grandfather is on the watch for you." And again he cautiously advised me: "When he whips you he brings the rod straight down. Well, if you lie there quietly he may possibly hold the rod lower so that it won't break your skin. . . . Now, do you understand? Move your body towards him and the rod, and it will be all the better for you."

Winking at me with his dark, squinting eyes, he added: "I know more about such matters than a policeman even. I have been beaten on my bare shoulders till the skin came off, my boy!"

I looked at his bright face and remembered grandmother's story of Ivan-Czarevitch and Ivanoshka-dourachka.

CHAPTER III

WHEN I was well again I realized that Tsiganok occupied an important position in the household. Grandfather did not storm at him as he did at his sons, and would say behind his back, half-closing his eyes and nodding his head:

"He is a good workman--Tsiganok. Mark my words, he will get on; he will make his fortune."

My uncles too were polite and friendly with Tsiganok, and never played practical jokes on him as they did on the head workman, Gregory, who was the object of some insulting and spiteful trick almost every evening. Sometimes they made the handles of his scissors red-hot, or put a nail with the point upwards on the seat of his chair, or placed ready to his hand pieces of material all of the same color, so that when he, being half blind, had sewed them all into one piece, grandfather should scold him for it.

One day when he had fallen asleep after dinner in the kitchen, they painted his face with fuchsin, and he had to go about for a long time a ludicrous and terrifying spectacle, with two round, smeared eyeglasses looking out dully from his gray beard, and his long, livid nose drooping dejectedly, like a tongue.

They had an inexhaustible fund of such pranks, but the head workman bore it all in silence, only quackling softly, and taking care before he touched either trie iron, the scissors, the needlework or the thimble, to moisten his fingers copiously with saliva. This became a habit with him, and even at dinner-time before he took up his knife and fork he slobbered over his fingers, causing great amusement to the children. When he was hurt, his large face broke into waves of wrinkles, which curiously glided over his forehead, and, raising his eyebrows, vanished mysteriously on his bald cranium.

I do not remember how grandfather bore himself with regard to his sons' amusements, but grandmother used to shake her fist at them, crying:

"Shameless, ill-natured creatures!"

But my uncles spoke evil of Tsiganok too behind his back; they made fun of him, found fault with his work, and called him a thief and an idler.

I asked grandmother why they did this. She explained it to me without hesitation, and, as always, made the matter quite clear to me. "You see, each wants to take Vaniushka with him when he sets up in business for himself; that is why they run him down to each other. Say they, 'He 's a bad workman'; but they don't mean it. It is their artfulness. In addition to this, they are afraid that Vaniushka will not go with either of them, but will stay with grandfather, who always gets his own way, and might set up a third workshop with Ivanka, which would do your uncles no good. Now do you understand?" She laughed softly. "They are crafty about everything, setting God at naught; and grandfather, seeing their artfulness, teases them by saying: 'I shall buy Ivan a certificate of exemption so that they won't take him for a soldier. I can't do without him.' This makes them angry; it is just what they don't want; besides, they grudge the money. Exemptions cost money."

I was living with grandmother again, as I had done on the steamer, and every evening before I fell asleep she used to tell me fairy stories, or tales about her life, which were just like a story. But she spoke about family affairs, such as the distribution of the property amongst the children, and grandfather's purchase of a new house, lightly, in the character of a stranger regarding the matter from a distance, or at the most that of a neighbor, rather than that of the person next in importance to the head of the house.

From her I learned that Tsiganok was a foundling; he had been found one wet night in early spring, on a bench in the porch.

"There he lay," said grandmother pensively and mysteriously, "hardly able to cry, for he was nearly numb with cold."

"But why do people abandon children
^?
"

"It is because the mother has no milk, or anything to feed her baby with. Then she hears that a child which has been born somewhere lately is dead, and she goes and leaves her own there."

She paused and scratched her head; then sighing and gazing at the ceiling, she continued:

"Poverty is always the reason, Oleysha; and a kind of poverty which must not be talked about, for an unmarried girl dare not admit that she has a child--people would cry shame upon her.

"Grandfather wanted to hand Vaniushka over to the police, but I said 'No, we will keep him ourselves to fill the place of our dead ones.' For I have had eighteen children, you know. If they had all lived they would have filled a street--eighteen new families! I was married at eighteen, you see, and by this time I had had fifteen children, but God so loved my flesh and blood that He took all of them--all my little babies to the angels, and I was sorry and glad at the same time."

Sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightdress, huge and dishevelled, with her black hair falling about her, she looked like the bear which a bearded woodman from Cergatch had led into our yard not long ago.

Making the sign of the cross on her spotless, snowwhite breast, she laughed softly, always ready to make light of everything.

"It was better for them to be taken, but hard for me to be left desolate, so I was delighted to have Ivanka --but even now I feel the pain of my love for you, my little ones! . . . Well, we kept him, and baptized him, and he still lives happily with us. At first I used to call him 'Beetle,' because he really did buzz sometimes, and went creeping and buzzing through the rooms just like a beetle. You must love him. He is a good soul."

I did love Ivan, and admired him inexpressibly. On Saturday when, after punishing the children for the transgressions of the week, grandfather went to vespers, we had an indescribably happy time in the kitchen.

Tsiganok would get some cockroaches from the stove, make a harness of thread for them with great rapidity, cut out a paper sledge, and soon two pairs of black horses were prancing on the clean, smooth, yellow table. Ivan drove them at a canter, with a thin splinter of wood as a whip, and urged them on, shouting:

"Now they have started for the Bishop's house."

Then he gummed a small piece of paper to the back of one of the cockroaches and sent him to run behind the sledge.

"We forgot the bag," he explained. "The monk drags it with him as he runs. Now then, geeup!"

He tied the feet of another cockroach together with cotton, and as the insect hopped along, with its head thrust forward, he cried, clapping his hands:

"This is the deacon coming out of the wineshop to say vespers."

After this he showed us a mouse which stood up at the word of command, and walked on his hind legs, dragging his long tail behind him and blinking comically with his lively eyes, which were like black glass beads.

He made friends of mice, and used to carry them about in his bosom, and feed them with sugar and kiss them.

"Mice are clever creatures," he used to say in a tone of conviction. "The house-goblin is very fond of them, and whoever feeds them will have all his wishes granted by the old hob-goblin."

He could do conjuring tricks with cards and coins too, and he used to shout louder than any of the children; in fact, there was hardly any difference between them and him. One day when they were playing cards with him they made him "booby" several times in succession, and he was very much offended. He stuck his lips out sulkily and refused to play any more, and he complained to me afterward, his nose twitching as he spoke:

"It was a put-up job! They were signaling to one another and passing the cards about under the table. Do you call that playing the game? If it comes to trickery I 'm not so bad at it myself."

Yet he was nineteen years old and bigger than all four of us put together.

I have special memories of him on holiday evenings, when grandfather and Uncle Michael went out to see their friends, and curly headed, untidy Uncle Jaakov appeared with his guitar while grandmother prepared tea with plenty of delicacies, and vodka in a square bottle with red flowers cleverly molded in glass on its lower part. Tsiganok shone bravely on these occasions in his holiday attire. Creeping softly and sideways came Gregory, with his colored spectacles gleaming; came Nyanya Eugenia--pimply, red-faced and fat like a Toby-jug, with cunning eyes and a piping voice; came the hirsute deacon from Uspenski, and other dark slimy people bearing a resemblance to pikes and eels. They all ate and drank a lot, breathing hard the while; and the children had wineglasses of sweet syrup given them as a treat, and gradually there was kindled a warm but strange gaiety.

Uncle Jaakov tuned his guitar amorously, and as he did so he always uttered the same words:

"Well, now let us begin!"

Shaking his curly head, he bent over the guitar, stretching out his neck like a goose; the expression on his round, careless face became dreamy, his passionate, elusive eyes were obscured in an unctuous mist, and lightly touching the chords, he played something disjointed, involuntarily rising to his feet as he played. His music demanded an intense silence. It rushed like a rapid torrent from somewhere far away, stirring one's heart and penetrating it with an incomprehensible sensation of sadness and uneasiness. Under the influence of that music we all became melancholy, and the oldest present felt themselves to be no more than children. We sat perfectly still--lost in a dreamy silence. Sascha Michailov especially listened with all his might as he sat upright beside our uncle, gazing at the guitar open-mouthed, and slobbering with delight. And the rest of us remained as if we had been frozen, or had been put under a spell. The only sound besides was the gentle murmur of the samovar which did not interfere with the complaint of the guitar.

Two small square windows threw their light into the darkness of the autumn night, and from time to time some one tapped on them lightly. The yellow lights of two tallow candles, pointed like spears, flickered on the table.

Uncle Jaakov grew more and more rigid, as though he were in a deep sleep with his teeth clenched; but his hands seemed to live with a separate existence. The bent fingers of his right hand quivered indistinctly over the dark keyboard, just like fluttering and struggling birds, while his left passed up and down the neck with elusive rapidity.

When he had been drinking he nearly always sang through his teeth in an unpleasantly shrill voice, an endless song:

"If Jaakove were a dog 
 He 'd howl from morn to night. 
 Oie! I am a-weary! 
 Oie! Life is dreary! 
 In the streets the nuns walk, 
 On the fence the ravens talk. 
 Oie! I am a-weary! 
 The cricket chirps behind the stove 
 And sets the beetles on the move. 
 Oie! I am a-weary! 
 One beggar hangs his stockings up to dry, 
 The other steals it away on the sly. 
 Oie! I am a-weary! 
 Yes! Life is very dreary!"