My Childhood (28 page)

Leaning against grandmother's shoulder, my mother whispered something in her ear, and grandmother blinked as if the light were in her eyes. The air of constraint grew more noticeable.

Suddenly grandfather said very clearly, in a cool, malicious tone:

"The rumor which came to my ears, Eugen Vassilev, my good sir, said that there was no fire, but that you simply lost everything at cards."

There was a dead silence, broken only by the hissing of the samovar and the splashing of the rain against the window-panes; at length mother said in a persuasive tone:

"Papasha--"

"What do you mean--
'papasha'?"
cried grandfather in a deafening voice. "What next? Did n't I tell you that a person of thirty does not go well with one of twenty years? . . . There you are . . . and there he is--cunning rogue! A nobleman! . . . What? . . Well, little daughter?"

They all four shouted at the tops of their voices, and my stepfather shouted loudest of all. I went out to the porch and sat on a heap of wood, stupefied by my amazement at finding mother so changed, so different from what she used to be. This fact had not struck me so forcibly when I was in the room with her, as it did now in the twilight with the memory of what she had been clearly before my mind.

Later on, though I have forgotten the circumstances connected with it, I found myself at Sormova, in a house where everything was new; the walls were bare and hemp grew out of the chinks between the beams, and in the hemp were a lot of cockroaches. Mother and my stepfather lived in two rooms with windows looking on to the street, and I lived with grandmother in the kitchen, which had one window looking out on the roof. On the other side of the roof the chimneys of a factory rose up to the sky, belching forth a thick smoke, and the winter wind blew this smoke over the entire village; and our cold rooms were always filled with the odor of something burning. Early in the morning the wolves howled: "Khvou--ou--ou--

By standing on a stool one could see through the top window-pane, across the roof, the gate of the factory lit up by lanterns, half-open like the black, toothless mouth of an old beggar, and a crowd of little people crawling into it. At noon the black lips of the gate again opened and the factory disgorged its chewed-up people, who flowed along the street in a black stream till a rough, snowy wind came flying along and drove them into their houses. We very seldom saw the sky over the village; from day to day, over the roofs of the houses, and over the snow-drifts sprinkled with soot, hung another roof, gray and flat, which crushed the imagination, and blinded one with its overwhelming drabness.

In the evenings a dim red glow quivered over the factory, lighting up the chimney-pots, and making the chimneys look, not as if they rose from the earth to the sky, but as if they were falling to the earth from that smoky cloud; and as they fell they seemed to be breathing out flames, and howling.

It was unbearably tedious to look at all this, and the monotony of it preyed evilly on my heart. Grandmother did the work of a general servant, cooked, washed the floors, chopped wood, and fetched water from morning till night, and came to bed weary, grumbling, and sighing. Sometimes when she had finished cooking she would put on her short, padded bodice, and with her skirt well lifted, she would repair to the town.

"I will go and have a look at the old man, and see how he is getting on."

"Take me with you."

"You would be frozen. Look how it is snowing!" And she would walk seven versts, by the roads, or across the snowy fields.

Mother, yellow, pregnant, and shivering with cold, went about wrapped in a gray, torn shawl with a fringe.

I hated that shawl, which disfigured the large, wellbuilt body; I hated the tails of the fringe, and tore them off; I hated the house, the factory, and the village. Mother went about in downtrodden felt boots, coughing all the time, and her unbecomingly fat stomach heaved, her gray-blue eyes had a bright, hard gleam in them, and she often stood about against the bare walls just as if she were glued to them. Sometimes she would stand for a whole hour looking out of the window on to the street, which was like a jaw in which half the teeth were blackened and crooked from age, and the other half had quite decayed and had been replaced by false ones.

"Why do we live here
^?
" I asked.

"Ach! . . . You hold your tongue, can't you?" she answered.

She spoke very seldom to me, and when she did speak it was only to order me about:

"Go there! . . . Come here! . . . Fetch this!"

I was not often allowed out in the street, and on each occasion I returned home bearing signs of having been knocked about by other boys; for fighting was my favorite, indeed, my only enjoyment, and I threw myself into it with ardor. Mother whipped me with a strap, but the punishment only irritated me further, and the next time I fought with childish fury--and mother gave me a worse punishment. This went on till one day I warned her that if she did not leave off beating me I should bite her hand, and run away to the fields and get frozen to death. She pushed me away from her in amazement, and walked about the room, panting from exhaustion as she said:

"You are getting like a wild animal!"

That feeling which is called love began to blossom in my heart now, full of life, and tremulous as a rainbow; and my resentment against every one burst out oftener, like a dark blue, smoky flame, and an oppressive feeling of irritation smoldered in my heart--a consciousness of being entirely alone in that gray, meaningless existence.

My stepfather was severe with me, and hardly ever speaking to mother, went about whistling or coughing, and after dinner would stand in front of a mirror and assiduously pick his uneven teeth with a splinter of wood. His quarrels with mother became more frequent--angrily addressing her as "you" (instead of "thou"), a habit which exasperated me beyond measure. When there was a quarrel on he used to shut the kitchen door closely, evidently not wishing me to hear what he said, but all the same the sound of his deep bass voice could be heard quite plainly. One day he cried, with a stamp of his foot:

"Just because you are fool enough to become pregnant, I can't ask any one to come and see me--you

I was so astonished, so furiously angry, that I jumped up in the air so high that I knocked my head against the ceiling and bit my tongue till it bled.

On Saturdays workmen came in batches of ten to see my stepfather and sell him their food-tickets, which they ought to have taken to the shop belonging to the works to spend in place of money; but my stepfather used to buy them at half-price. He received the workmen in the kitchen, sitting at the table, looking very important, and as he took the cards he would frown and say:

"A rouble and a half!"

"Now, Eugen Vassilev, for the love of God--"

"A rouble and a half!"

This muddled, gloomy existence only lasted till mother's confinement, when I was sent back to grandfather. He was then living at Kunavin, where he rented a poky room with a Russian stove, and two win

dows looking on to the yard, in a two-storied house on a sandy road, which extended to the fence of the Napolno churchyard.

"What's this
^?
" he cried, squeaking with laughter, as he met me. "They say there 's no better friend than your own mother; but now, it seems, it is not the mother but the old devil of a grandfather who is the friend. Ugh--
you!"

Before I had time to look about my new home grandmother arrived with mother and the baby. My stepfather had been dismissed from the works for pilfering from the workmen, but he had gone after other employment and had been taken on in the bookingoffice of the railway station almost at once.

After a long, uneventful period, once more I was living with mother in the basement of a storehouse. As soon as she was settled mother sent me to school-- and from the very first I took a dislike to it.

I went thither in mother's shoes, with a coat made out of a bodice belonging to grandmother, a yellow shirt, and trousers which had been lengthened. My attire immediately became an object of ridicule, and for the yellow shirt I received "The ace of diamonds."

I soon became friendly with the boys, but the master and the priest did not like me.

The master was a jaundiced-looking, bold man who suffered from a continuous bleeding of the nose; he

MOTHER SENT ME TO SCHOOL--AND FROM THE FIRST I TOOK A DISLIKE

used to appear in the schoolroom with his nostrils stopped up with cotton-wool, and as he sat at his table, asking us questions in snuffling tones, he would suddenly stop in the middle of a word, take the wool out of his nostrils and look at it, shaking his head. He had a flat, copper-colored face, with a sour expression, and there was a greenish tint in his wrinkles; but it was his literally pewter-colored eyes which were the most hideous feature of it, and they were so unpleasantly glued to my face that I used to feel that I must brush them off my cheek with my hands.

For several days I was in the first division, and at the top of the class, quite close to the master's table, and my position was almost unbearable. He seemed to see no one but me, and he was snuffling all the time:

"Pyesh--kov, you must put on a clean shirt. Pyesh--kov, don't make a noise with your feet. Pyesh--kov, your bootlaces are undone again."

But I paid him out for his savage insolence. One day I took the half of a frozen watermelon, cut out the inside, and fastened it by a string over a pulley on the outer door. When the door opened the melon went up, but when my teacher shut the door the hollow melon descended upon his bald head like a cap. The janitor was sent with me with a note to the headmaster's house, and I paid for my prank with my own skin.

Another time I sprinkled snuff over his table, and he sneezed so much that he had to leave the class and send his brother-in-law to take his place. This was an officer who set the class singing: "God save the Czar!" and "Oh, Liberty! my Liberty!" Those who did not sing in tune he rapped over the head with a ruler, which made a funny, hollow noise, but it hurt.

The Divinity teacher, the handsome, young, luxuriant-haired priest, did not like me because I had no Bible, and also because I mocked his way of speaking. The first thing he did when he entered the classroom was to ask me:

"Pyeshkov, have you brought that book or not? Yes. The book!"

"No," I answered, "I have not brought it. Yes."

"What do you mean--yes?"

"No."

"Well, you can just go home. Yes--home, for I don't intend to teach you. Yes! I don't intend to do it."

This did not trouble me much. I went out and kicked my heels in the dirty village street till the end of the lesson, watching the noisy life about me.

This priest had a beautiful face, like a Christ, with caressing eyes like a woman's, and little hands--gentle, like everything about him. Whatever he handled-- a book, a ruler, a penholder, whatever it might be-- he handled carefully, as if it were alive and very fragile, and as if he loved it and were afraid of spoiling it by touching it. He was not quite so gentle with the children, but all the same they loved him.

Notwithstanding the fact that I learned tolerably well, I was soon told that I should be expelled from the school for unbecoming conduct. I became depressed, for I saw a very unpleasant time coming, as mother was growing more irritable every day, and beat me more than ever.

But help was at hand. Bishop Khrisanph * paid an unexpected visit to the school. He was a little man, like a wizard, and, if I remember rightly, was humpbacked.

Sitting at the table, looking so small in his wide black clothes, and with a funny hat like a little pail on his head, he shook his hands free from his sleeves and said:

"Now, children, let us have a talk together."

And at once the classroom became warm and bright, and pervaded by an atmosphere of unfamiliar pleasantness.

¹
The author of the famous work, in three volumes, entitled "Religions of the Ancient World," and the article on "Egyptian Metempsychosis," as well as several articles of public interest such as "Concerning Marriage, and Women." That last article made a deep impression on me when I read it in my youth. It seems to me that I have not remembered its title correctly, but it was published in some theological journal in the seventies.

Calling me to the table, after many others had had their turns, he asked me gravely:

"And how old are you? Is that all? Why, what a tall boy you are! I suppose you have been standing out in the rain pretty often, have you? Eh?"

Placing one dried-up hand with long, sharp nails on the table, and catching hold of his sparse beard with the fingers of the other, he placed his face, with its kind eyes, quite close to mine, as he said:

"Well, now tell me which you like best of the Bible stories."

When I told him that I had no Bible and did not learn Scripture history, he pulled his cowl straight, saying:

"How is that? You know it is absolutely necessary for you to learn it. But perhaps you have learned some by listening? You know the Psalms? Good! And the prayers? . . . There, you see! And the lives of the Saints too? ... In rhyme? . . . Then I think you are very well up in the subject."

At this moment our priest appeared--flushed and out of breath. The Bishop blessed him, but when he began to speak about me, he raised his hand, saying:

"Excuse me ... just a minute. . . . Now, tell me the story of Alexei, the man of God.

"Fine verses those---eh, my boy?" he said, when I came to a full stop, having forgotten the next verse. "Let us have something else now--something about King David. . . . Go on, I am listening very attentively."

I saw that he was really listening, and that the verses pleased him. He examined me for a long time, then he suddenly stood up and asked quickly:

"You have learned the Psalms? Who taught you? A good grandfather, is he? Eh? Bad? You don't say so! . . . But are n't you very naughty?"

I hesitated, but at length I said:

"Yes."

The teacher and the priest corroborated my confession garrulously, and he listened to them with his eyes cast down; then he said with a sigh:

"You hear what they say about you? Come here!"

Placing his hand, which smelt of cypress wood, on my head, he asked:

"Why are you so naughty?"

"It is so dull learning."

"Dull? Now, my boy, that is not true. If you found it dull you would be a bad scholar, whereas your teachers testify that you are a very apt pupil. That means that you have another reason for being naughty."

Taking a little book from his breast, he said as he wrote in it:

"Pyeshkov, Alexei. There! . . . All the same, my boy, you must keep yourself in hand, and try not to be too naughty. . . . We will allow you to be just a little naughty; but people have plenty to plague them without that. Is n't it so, children?"

Many voices answered gaily:

"Yes."

"But I can see that you are not very naughty yourselves. Am I right?"

And the boys laughingly answered all together:

"No. We are very naughty too--very!"

The Bishop leaned over the back of a chair, drew me to him, and said surprisingly, causing us all--even the teacher and the priest--to laugh:

"It is a fact, my brothers--that when I was your age I was very naughty too. What do you think of that?"

The children laughed, and he began to ask them questions, adroitly contriving to muddle them, so that they began to answer each other; and the merriment redoubled. At length he stood up, saying:

"Well, it is very nice to be with you, but it is time for me to go now."

Raising his hand and throwing back his sleeve, he made the sign of the Cross over us all with one wide gesture, and blessed us:

"In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I bless you and your labors. Good-by!"

They all cried:

"Good-by, my lord. Come again soon."

Shaking his cowl, he said:

"I shall come again. I shall come again, and bring you some little books."

And he said to the teacher as he sailed out of the classroom:

"Let them go home now."

He led me by the hand to the porch, where he said quietly, bending down to me:

"So you will hold yourself in, won't you? ... Is that settled? ... I understand why you are naughty, you know. . . . Good-by, my boy!"

I was very excited; my heart was seething with strange feelings, and when the teacher, having dismissed the rest of the class, kept me in to tell me that now I ought to be quieter than water and humbler than grass, I listened to him attentively and willingly.

The priest, putting on his fur-coat, chimed in gently:

"And from to-day you will have to assist at my lessons. Yes, you 'll have to. And sit still too. Yes-- sit still."

But while matters were improving at school, an unpleasant incident occurred at home. I stole a rouble from mother. The crime had been committed without forethought. One evening mother went out and left me to keep house and mind the baby; feeling bored, I began to turn over the leaves of a book belonging to my stepfather--"The Memoirs of a Doctor," by Dumas Pere--and between the pages I came across two notes, one for ten roubles and the other for one rouble. I could not understand the book, so I shut it up; then it suddenly dawned upon me that if I had a rouble I could buy not only the Bible, but also the book about Robinson. That such a book existed I had learned at school not long before this. One frosty day in recreation time, I was telling the boys a fairy-story, when one of them observed in a tone of contempt:

"Fairy-tales are bosh! 'Robinson' is what I like. It is a true story."

Finding several other boys who had read "Robinson" and were full of its praises, I felt offended at their not liking grandmother's stories, and made up my mind to read "Robinson" for myself, so that I should be able to tell them it was "bosh!"

The next day I brought the Bible and two torn volumes of Andersen's fairy-tales to school, together with three pounds of white bread and a pound of sausages. In the little dark shop by the wall of Vladinursk Church there had also been a "Robinson"--a thin little book with a yellow cover, and a picture of a bearded man in a fur nightcap, with the skin of a wild beast over his shoulders, on the front page; but I did not like the look of it. Even the exterior of the fairytales was pleasing, in spite of their being torn.

In the long playtime I distributed the bread and sausages amongst the boys, and we began to read that wonderful story "The Nightingale," which took all our hearts by storm.

"In China all the people are Chinese, and even the Emperor is a Chinaman"--I remember how pleasantly this phrase struck me with its simple, joyful, smiling music. There were many other points about the story too which were wonderfully good.

But I was not to be allowed to read "The Nightingale" in school. There was not time enough, for when I returned home mother, who was standing before the fire holding a frying-pan in which she had been cooking some eggs, asked me in a strange, subdued voice:

"Did you take that rouble?"

"Yes, I took it--out of that book there."

She gave me a sound beating with the frying-pan, and took away Andersen's book and hid it somewhere so that I could never find it again, which was a far worse punishment to me than the beating.

I did not go to school for several days, and during that time my stepfather must have told one of his friends about my exploit, who told his children, who carried the story to school, and when I went back I was met with the new cry "Thief!"

It was a brief and clear description, but it did not happen to be a true one, seeing that I had not attempted to conceal the fact that it was I who had taken the rouble. I tried to explain this, but they did not believe me; and when I went home I told mother that I was not going to school any more.

Sitting by the window, again pregnant, with a gray face and distraught, weary eyes, she was feeding my brother Sascha, and she stared at me with her mouth open, like a fish.

"You are wrong," she said quietly. "No one could possibly know that you took the rouble."