My Childhood (8 page)

"You are not asleep, you rogue, you are only making believe," she said softly. "Come, my duck, let's have some bedclothes!"

Foreseeing what would happen, I could not repress a smile, upon seeing which she cried: "So this is how you trick your old grandmother
^?
" And taking hold of the blanket she drew it towards her with so much force and skill that I bounced up in the air, and turning over and over fell back with a squash into the soft feather bed, while she said with a chuckle: "What is it, little Hop o' my Thumb? Have you been bitten by a mosquito?"

But sometimes she prayed for such a long time that I really did fall asleep, and did not hear her come to bed.

The longer prayers were generally the conclusion of a day of trouble, or a day of quarreling and fighting; and it was very interesting to listen to them. Grandmother gave to God a circumstantial account of all that had happened in the house. Bowed down, looking like a great mound, she knelt, at first whispering rapidly and indistinctly, then hoarsely muttering:

"O Lord, Thou knowest that all of us wish to do better. Michael, the elder, ought to have been set up in the town--it will do him harm to be on the river; and the other is a new neighborhood and not overdone. I don't know what will come of it all! There's father now. Jaakov is his favorite. Can't it be right to love one child more than the others? He is an obstinate old man; do Thou, O Lord, teach him!"

Gazing at the dark-featured icon, with her large, brilliant eyes, she thus counseled God:

"Send him a good dream, O Lord, to make him understand how he ought to treat his children!"

After prostrating herself and striking her broad forehead on the floor, she again straightened herself, and said coaxingly:

"And send Varvara some happiness! How has she displeased Thee? Is she more sinful than the others? Why should a healthy young woman be so afflicted? And remember Gregory, O Lord! His eyes are getting worse and worse. If he goes blind he will be sent adrift. That will be terrible! He has used up all his strength for grandfather, but do you think it likely that grandfather will help him? O Lord! Lord!"

She remained silent for a long time, with her head bowed meekly, and her hands hanging by her sides, as still as if she had fallen asleep, or had been suddenly frozen.

"What else is there?" she asked herself aloud, wrinkling her brows.

"O Lord, save all the faithful! Pardon me--accursed fool as I am!--Thou knowest that I do not sin out of malice but out of stupidity." And drawing a deep breath she would say lovingly and contentedly: "Son of God, Thou knowest all! Father, Thou seest all things."

I was very fond of grandmother's God Who seemed so near to her, and I often said:

"Tell me something about God."

She used to speak about Him in a peculiar manner --very quietly, strangely drawing out her words, closing her eyes; and she made a point of always sitting down and arranging her head-handkerchief very deliberately before she began.

"God's seat is on the hills, amidst the meadows of Paradise; it is an altar of sapphires under silver linden trees which flower all the year round, for in Paradise there is no winter, nor even autumn, and the flowers never wither, for joy is the divine favor. And round about God many angels fly like flakes of snow; and it may be even that bees hum there, and white doves fly between Heaven and earth, telling God all about us and everybody. And here on earth you and I and grandfather each has been given an angel. God treats us all equally. For instance, your angel will go and tell God: 'Lexei put his tongue out at grandfather.' And God says: 'All right, let the old man whip him.' And so it is with all of us; God gives to all what they deserve--to some grief, to others joy. And so all is right that He does, and the angels rejoice, and spread their wings and sing to Him without ceasing: 'Glory be unto Thee, O God; Glory be unto Thee.' And He just smiles on them, and it is enough for them--and more." And she would smile herself, shaking her head from side to side.

"Have you seen that?"

"No, I have not seen it, but I know."

When she spoke about God, or Heaven, or the angels, she seemed to shrink in size; her face grew younger, and her liquid eyes emitted a curious warm radiance. I used to take her heavy, satiny plait in my hands, and wind it round my neck as I sat quite still and listened to the endless but never tedious story.

"It is not given to men to see God--their sight is dim! Only the saints may look upon Him face to face. But I have seen angels myself; they reveal themselves sometimes to souls in a state of grace. I was standing in church at an early Mass, and I saw two moving about the altar like clouds. One could see everything, through them, growing brighter and brighter, and their gossamer-like wings touched the floor. They moved about the altar, helping old Father Elia, and supporting his elbows as he raised his feeble hands in prayer. He was very old, and being almost blind, stumbled frequently; but that day he got through the Mass quickly, and was finished early. When I saw them I nearly died of joy. My heart seemed as if it would burst; my tears ran down. Ah, how beautiful it was! Oh, Lenka, dear heart, where God is-- whether in Heaven or earth--all goes well."

"But you don't mean to say that everything goes well here--in our house?"

Making the sign of the cross grandmother answered:

"Our Lady be praised--everything goes well."

This irritated me. I could not agree that things were going well in our household. From my point of view they were becoming more and more intolerable.

One day, as I passed the door of Uncle Michael's room I saw Aunt Natalia, not fully dressed, with her hands folded on her breast, pacing up and down like a creature distraught, and moaning, not loudly, but in a tone of agony:

"My God, take me under Thy protection! Remove me from here!"

I could sympathize with her prayer as well as I could understand Gregory when he growled:

"As soon as I am quite blind they will turn me out to beg; it will be better than this, anyhow."

And I wished that he would make haste and go blind, for I meant to seize the opportunity to go away with him so that we could start begging together. I had already mentioned the matter to Gregory, and he had replied, smiling in his beard:

"That's right! We will go together. But I shall show myself in the town. There's a grandson of Vassili Kashmirin's there--his daughter's son; he may give me something to do."

More than once I noticed a blue swelling under the sunken eyes of Aunt Natalia; and sometimes a swollen lip was thrown into relief by her yellow face.

"Does Uncle Michael beat her, then?" I asked grandmother. And she answered with a sigh:

"Yes, he beats her, but not very hard--the devil! Grandfather does not object so long as he does it at night. He is ill-natured, and she--she is like a jelly!

"But he does not beat her as much as he used to," she continued in a more cheerful tone. "He just gives her a blow on the mouth, or boxes her ears, or drags her about by the hair for a minute or so; but at one time he used to torture her for hours together. Grandfather beat me one Easter Day from dinner-time till bed-time. He kept on; he just stopped to get his breath sometimes, and then started again. And he used a strap too!"

"But why did he do it?"

"I forget now. Another time he knocked me about till I was nearly dead, and then kept me without food for five hours. I was hardly alive when he had finished with me."

I was thunderstruck. Grandmother was twice as big as grandfather, and it was incredible that he should be able to get the better of her like this.

"Is he stronger than you, then?" I asked.

"Not stronger, but older. Besides, he is my husband, he has to answer for me to God; but my duty is to suffer patiently."

It was an interesting and pleasing sight to see her dusting the icon and cleaning its ornamentation; it was richly adorned with pearls, silver and colored gems in the crown, and as she took it gently in her hands she gazed at it with a smile, and said in a tone of feeling:

"See what a sweet face it is!" And crossing herself and kissing it, she went on: "Dusty art thou, and begrimed, Mother, Help of Christians, Joy of the Elect! Look, Lenia, darling, how small the writing is, and what tiny characters they are; and yet it is all quite distinct. It is called 'The Twelve Holy-Days,' and in the middle you see the great Mother of God by predestination immaculate; and here is written: 'Mourn not for me, Mother, because I am about to be laid in the grave.'"

Sometimes it seemed to me as if she played with the icon as earnestly and seriously as my Cousin Ekaterina with her doll.

She often saw devils, sometimes several together, sometimes one alone.

"One clear moonlight night, during the great Fast, I was passing the Rudolphovs' house, and looking up I saw, on the roof, a devil sitting close to the chimney! He was all black, and he was holding his horned head over the top of the chimney and sniffing vigorously. There he sat sniffing and grunting, the great, unwieldy creature, with his tail on the roof, scraping with his feet all the time. I made the sign of the Cross at him and said: 'Christ is risen from the dead, and His enemies are scattered.' At that he gave a low howl and slipped head over heels from the roof to the yard--so
he
was scattered! They must have been cooking meat at the Rudolphovs' that day, and he was enjoying the smell of it."

I laughed at her picture of the devil flying head over heels off the roof, and she laughed too as she said:

"They are as fond of playing tricks as children. One day I was doing the washing in the washhouse and it was getting late, when suddenly the door of the little room burst open and in rushed lots of little red, green and black creatures like cockroaches, and all sizes, and spread themselves all over the place. I flew towards the door, but I could not get past; there I was unable to move hand or foot amongst a crowd of devils! They filled the whole place so that I could not turn round. They crept about my feet, plucked at my dress, and crowded round me so that I had not even room to cross myself. Shaggy, and soft, and warm, somewhat resembling cats, though they walked on their hind legs, they went round and round me, peering into everything, showing their teeth like mice, blinking their small green eyes, almost piercing me with their horns, and sticking out their little tails--they were like pigs' tails. Oh, my dear! I seemed to be going out of my mind. And did n't they push me about too! The candle nearly went out, the water in the copper became luke-warm, the washing was all thrown about the floor. Ah! your very breath was trouble and sorrow."

Closing my eyes, I could visualize the threshold of the little chamber with its gray cobble-stones, and the unclean stream of shaggy creatures of diverse colors which gradually filled the washhouse. I could see them blowing out the candle and thrusting out their impudent pink tongues. It was a picture both comical and terrifying.

Grandmother was silent a minute, shaking her head, before she burst out again:

"And I saw some fiends too, one wintry night, when it was snowing. I was coming across the Dinkov Causeway--the place where, if you remember, your Uncle Michael and your Uncle Jaakov tried to drown your father in an ice-hole--and I was just going to take the lower path, when there came the sounds of hissing and hooting, and I looked up and saw a team of three raven-black horses tearing towards me. On the coachman's place stood a great fat devil, in a red nightcap, with protruding teeth. He was holding the reins, made of forged iron chains, with outstretched arms, and as there was no way round, the horses flew right over the pond, and were hidden by a cloud of snow. All those sitting in the sledge behind were devils too; there they sat, hissing and screaming and waving their nightcaps. In all, seven troikas like this tore by, as if they had been fire-engines, all with black horses, and all carrying a load of thoroughbred devils. They pay visits to each other, you know, and drive about in the night to their different festivities. I expect that was a devil's wedding that I saw."

One had to believe grandmother, because she spoke so simply and convincingly.

But the best of all her stories was the one which told how Our Lady went about the suffering earth, and how she commanded the woman-brigand, or the "Amazon-chief" Engalichev, not to kill or rob Russian people. And after that came the stories about Blessed Alexei; about Ivan the Warrior, and Vassili the Wise; of the Priest Kozlya, and the beloved child of God; and the terrible stories of Martha Posadnitz, of Baba Ustye the robber chief, of Mary the sinner of Egypt, and of sorrowing mothers of robber sons. The fairytales, and stories of old times, and the poems which she knew were without number.

She feared no one--neither grandfather, nor devils, nor any of the powers of evil; but she was terribly afraid of black cockroaches, and could feel their presence when they were a long way from her. Sometimes she would wake me in the night whispering:

"Oleysha, dear, there is a cockroach crawling about. Do get rid of it, for goodness' sake."

Half-asleep, I would light the candle and creep about on the floor seeking the enemy--a quest in which I did not always succeed at once.

"No, there's not a sign of one," I would say; but lying quite still with her head muffled up in the bedclothes, she would entreat me in a faint voice:

"Oh, yes, there is one there! Do look again,
please.
I am sure there is one about somewhere."

And she was never mistaken. Sooner or later I found the cockroach, at some distance from the bed; and throwing the blanket off her she would breathe a sigh of relief and smile as she said:

"Have you killed it? Thank God! Thank you."

If I did not succeed in discovering the insect, she could not go to sleep again, and I could feel how she trembled in the silence of the night; and I heard her whisper breathlessly:

"It is by the door. Now it has crawled under the trunk."

"Why are you so frightened of cockroaches?"

"I don't know myself," she would answer, reasonably enough. "It is the way the horrid black things crawl about. God has given a meaning to all other vermin: woodlice show that the house is damp; bugs mean that the walls are dirty; lice foretell an illness, as every one knows; but these creatures!--who knows what powers they possess, or what they live on?"