In the World
This made me very angry, as you may imagine, but my love of reading increased. I understood that if a saint had entered that household, my employers would have set to work to teach him, tried to set him to their own tune. They would have done this for something to do. If they had left off judging people, scolding them, jeering at them, they would have forgotten how to talk, would have been stricken with dumbness, and would not have been themselves at all. When a man is aware of himself, it must be through his relations with other people. My employers could not behave themselves toward those about them otherwise than as teachers, always ready to condemn; and if they had taught somebody to live exactly as they lived themselves, to think and feel in the same way, even then they would have condemned him for that very reason. They were that sort of people.
I continued to read on the sly. The old woman destroyed books several times, and I suddenly found myself in debt to the shopkeeper for the enormous amount of forty-seven copecks. He demanded the money, and threatened to take it from my employers' money when they sent me to make purchases.
"What would happen then?" he asked jeeringly.
To me he was unbearably repulsive. Apparently he felt this, and tortured me with various threats from which he derived a peculiar enjoyment. When I went into the shop his pimply face broadened, and he would ask gently:
"Have you brought your debt?"
"No."
This startled him. He frowned.
"How is that? Am I supposed to give you things out of charity? I shall have to get it from you by sending you to the reformatory."
I had no way of getting the money, my wages were paid to grandfather. I lost my presence of mind. What would happen to me? And in answer to my entreaty that he wait for settlement of the debt, the shopkeeper stretched out his oily, puffy hand, like a bladder, and said:
"Kiss my hand and I will wait."
But when I seized a weight from the counter and brandished it at him, he ducked and cried:
"What are you doing? What are you doing? I was only joking."
Knowing well that he was not joking, I resolved to steal the money to get rid of him. In the morning when I was brushing the master's clothes, money jingled in his trousers' pockets, and sometimes it fell out and rolled on the floor. Once some rolled into a crack in the boards under the staircase. I forgot to say anything about this, and remembered it only several days afterward when I found two _greven_ between the boards. When I gave it back to the master his wife said to him:
"There, you see! You ought to count your money when you leave it in your pockets."
But my master, smiling at me, said:
"He would not steal, I know."
Now, having made up my mind to steal, I remembered these words and his trusting smile, and felt how hard it would be for me to rob him. Several times I took silver out of the pockets and counted it, but I could not take it. For three days I tormented myself about this, and suddenly the whole affair settled itself quickly and simply. The master asked me unexpectedly:
"What is the matter with you, Pyeshkov? You have become dull lately. Are n't you well, or what?"
I frankly told him all my troubles. He frowned.
"Now you see what books lead to! From them, in some way or another, trouble always comes."
He gave me half a ruble and admonished me sternly:
"Now look here; don't you go telling my wife or my mother, or there will be a row."
Then he smiled kindly and said:
"You are very persevering, devil take you! Never mind; it is a good thing. Anyhow, give up books. When the New Year comes, I will order a good paper, and you can read that."
And so in the evenings, from tea-time till supper-time, I read aloud to my employers "The Moscow Gazette," the novels of Bashkov, Rokshnin, Rudinskovski, and other literature, for the nourishment of people who suffered from deadly dullness.
I did not like reading aloud, for it hindered me from understanding what I read. But my employers listened attentively, with a sort of reverential eagerness, sighing, amazed at the villainy of the heroes, and saying proudly to one another:
"And we live so quietly, so peacefully; we know nothing of such things, thank God!"
They mixed up the incidents, ascribed the deeds of the famous brigand Churkin to the post-boy Thoma Kruchin, and mixed the names. When I corrected their mistakes they were surprised.
"What a memory he has!"
Occasionally the poems of Leonide Grave appeared in "The Moscow Gazette." I was delighted with them. I copied several of them into a note-book, but my employers said of the poet:
"He is an old man, you know; so he writes poetry." "A drunkard or an imbecile, it is all the same."
I liked the poetry of Strujkin, and the Count Memento Mori, but both the women said the verses were clumsy.
"Only the Petrushki or actors talk in verse."
It was a hard life for me on winter evenings, under the eyes of my employers, in that close, small room. The dead night lay outside the window, now and again the ice cracked. The others sat at the table in silence, like frozen fish. A snow-storm would rattle the windows and beat against the walls, howl down the chimney, and shake the flue-plate. The children cried in the nursery. I wanted to sit by myself in a dark corner and howl like a wolf.
At one end of the table sat the women, knitting socks or sewing. At the other sat Victorushka, stooping, copying plans unwillingly, and from time to time calling out:
"Don't shake the table! Goats, dogs, mice!"
At the side, behind an enormous embroidery-frame, sat the master, sewing a tablecloth in cross-stitch. Under his fingers appeared red lobsters, blue fish, yellow butterflies, and red autumn leaves. He had made the design himself, and had sat at the work for three winters. He had grown very tired of it, and often said to me in the daytime, when I had some spare time:
"Come along, Pyeshkov; sit down to the tablecloth and do some of it!"
I sat down, and began to work with the thick needle. I was sorry for my master, and always did my best to help him. I had an idea that one day he would give up drawing plans, sewing, and playing at cards, and begin doing something quite different, something interesting, about which he often thought, throwing his work aside and gazing at it with fixed, amazed eyes, as at something unfamiliar to him. His hair fell over his forehead and cheeks; he looked like a laybrother in a monastery.
"What are you thinking of?" his wife would ask him.
"Nothing in particular," he would reply, returning to his work.
I listened in dumb amazement. Fancy asking a man what he was thinking of. It was a question which could not be answered. One's thoughts were always sudden and many, about all that passed before one's eyes, of what one saw yesterday or a year ago. It was all mixed up together, elusive, constantly moving and changing.
The serial in "The Moscow Gazette" was not enough to last the evening, and I went on to read the journals which were put away under the bed in the bedroom. The young mistress asked suspiciously:
"What do you find to read there? It is all pictures."
But under the bed, besides the "Painting Review," lay also "Flames," and so we read "Count Tyatin-Baltiski," by Saliass. The master took a great fancy to the eccentric hero of the story, and laughed mercilessly, till the tears ran down his cheeks, at the melancholy adventures of the hero, crying:
"Really, that is most amusing!"
"Piffle!" said the mistress to show her independence of mind.
The literature under the bed did me a great service. Through it, I had obtained the right to read the papers in the kitchen, and thus made it possible to read at night.
To my joy, the old woman went to sleep in the nursery for the nurse had a drunken fit. Victorushka did not interfere with me. As soon as the household was asleep, he dressed himself quietly, and disappeared somewhere till morning. I was not allowed to have a light, for they took the candles into the bedrooms, and I had no money to buy them for myself; so I began to collect the tallow from the candlesticks on the quiet, and put it in a sardine tin, into which I also poured lamp oil, and, making a wick with some thread, was able to make a smoky light. This I put on the stove for the night.
When I turned the pages of the great volumes, the bright red tongue of flame quivered agitatedly, the wick was drowned in the burning, evil-smelling fat, and the smoke made my eyes smart. But all this unpleasantness was swallowed up in the enjoyment with which I looked at the illustrations and read the description of them. These illustrations opened up before me a world which increased daily in breadth--a world adorned with towns, just like the towns of story-land. They showed me lofty hills and lovely seashores. Life developed wonderfully for me. The earth became more fascinating, rich in people, abounding in towns and all kinds of things. Now when I gazed into the distance beyond the Volga, I knew that it was not space which lay beyond, but before that, when I had looked, it used to make me feel oddly miserable. The meadows lay flat, bushes grew in clumps, and where the meadows ended, rose the indented black wall of the forest. Above the meadows it was dull, cold blue. The earth seemed an empty, solitary place. And my heart also was empty. A gentle sorrow nipped it; all desires had departed, and I thought of nothing. All I wanted was to shut my eyes. This melancholy emptiness promised me nothing, and sucked out of my heart all that there was in it.
The description of the illustrations told me in language which I could understand about other countries, other peoples. It spoke of various incidents of the past and present, but there was a lot which I did not understand, and that worried me. Sometimes strange words stuck in my brain, like "metaphysics," "chiliasm," "chartist." They were a source of great anxiety to me, and seemed to grow into monsters obstructing my vision. I thought that I should never understand anything. I did not succeed in finding out the meaning of those words. In fact, they stood like sentries on the threshold of all secret knowledge. Often whole phrases stuck in my memory for a long time, like a splinter in my finger, and hindered me from thinking of anything else.
I remembered reading these strange verses:
"All clad in steel, through the unpeopled land, Silent and gloomy as the grave, Rides the Czar of the Huns, Attilla. Behind him comes a black mass of warriors, crying, 'Where, then, is Rome; where is Rome the mighty?'"
That Rome was a city, I knew; but who on earth were the Huns? I simply had to find that out. Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master. "The Huns?" he cried in amazement. "The devil knows who they are. Some trash, I expect."
And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:
"That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is very bad, Pyeshkov."
Bad or good, I wanted to know.
I had an idea that the regimental chaplain, Soloviev, ought to know who the Huns were, and when I caught him in the yard, I asked him. The pale, sickly, always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows, and a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the earth, said to me:
"And what is that to do with you, eh?"
Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a ferocious:
"What-a-t?"
Then I concluded that the right person to ask about the Huns was the dispenser at the chemist's. He always looked at me kindly. He had a clever face, and gold glasses on his large nose.
"The Huns," said the dispenser, "were a nomad race, like the people of Khirgiz. There are no more of these people now. They are all dead."
I felt sad and vexed, not because the Huns were dead, but because the meaning of the word that had worried me for so long was quite simple, and was also of no use to me.
But I was grateful to the Huns after my collision with the word ceased to worry me so much, and thanks to Attilla, I made the acquaintance of the dispenser Goldberg.
This man knew the literal meaning of all words of wisdom. He had the keys to all knowledge. Setting his glasses straight with two fingers, he looked fixedly into my eyes and said, as if he were driving small nails into my forehead:
"Words, my dear boy, are like leaves on a tree. If we want to find out why the leaves take one form instead of another, we must learn how the tree grows. We must study books, my dear boy. Men are like a good garden in which everything grows, both pleasant and profitable."
I often had to run to the chemist's for soda-water and magnesia for the adults of the family, who were continually suffering from heartburn, and for castor-oil and purgatives for the children.
The short instructions which the dispenser gave me instilled into my mind a still deeper regard for books. They gradually became as necessary to me as vodka to the drunkard. They showed me a new life, a life of noble sentiments and strong desires which incite people to deeds of heroism and crimes. I saw that the people about me were fitted for neither heroism nor crime. They lived apart from everything that I read about in books, and it was hard to imagine what they found interesting in their lives. I had no desire to live such a life. I was quite decided on that point. I would not.
From the letterpress which accompanied the drawings I had learned that in Prague, London, and Paris there are no open drains in the middle of the city, or dirty gulleys choked with refuse. There were straight, broad streets, and different kinds of houses and churches. There they did not have a six-months-long winter, which shuts people up in their houses, and no great fast, when only fermenting cabbage, pickled mushrooms, oatmeal, and potatoes cooked in disgusting vegetable oil can be eaten. During the great fast books are forbidden, and they took away the "Review of Painting" from me, and that empty, meager life again closed about me. Now that I could compare it with the life pictured in books, it seemed more wretched and ugly than ever. When I could read I felt well and strong; I worked well and quickly, and had an object in life. The sooner I was finished, the more time I should have for reading. Deprived of books, I became lazy, and drowsy, and became a victim to forgetfulness, to which I had been a stranger before.
I remember that even during those dull days something mysterious happened. One evening when we had all gone to bed the bell of the cathedral suddenly rang out, arousing every one in the house at once. Half-dressed people rushed to the windows, asking one another:
"Is it a fire? Is that the alarm-bell?"
In the other flats one could hear the same bustle going on. Doors slammed; some one ran across the yard with a horse ready saddled. The old mistress shrieked that the cathedral had been robbed, but the master stopped her.
"Not so loud, Mamasha! Can't you hear that that is not an alarm-bell?"
"Then the archbishop is dead."
Victorushka climbed down from the loft, dressed himself, and muttered:
"I know what has happened. I know!"
The master sent me to the attic to see if the sky was red. I ran up-stairs and climbed to the roof through the dormer-window. There was no red light in the sky. The bell tolled slowly in the quiet frosty air. The town lay sleepily on the earth. In the darkness invisible people ran about, scrunching the snow under their feet. Sledges squealed, and the bell wailed ominously. I returned to the sitting-room.
"There is no red light in the sky."
"Foo, you! Good gracious!" said the master, who had on his greatcoat and cap. He pulled up his collar and began to put his feet into his goloshes undecidedly.
The mistress begged him:
"Don't go out! Don't go out!"
"Rubbish!"
Victorushka, who was also dressed, teased them all.
"I know what has happened."
When the brothers went out into the street the women, having sent me to get the samovar ready, rushed to the window. But the master rang the street door-bell almost directly, ran up the steps silently, shut the door, and said thickly:
"The Czar has been murdered!"
"How murdered?" exclaimed the old lady.
"He has been murdered. An officer told me so. What will happen now?"
Victorushka rang, and as he unwillingly took off his coat said angrily:
"And I thought it was war!"
Then they all sat down to drink tea, and talked together calmly, but in low voices and cautiously. The streets were quiet now, the bells had given up tolling. For two days they whispered together mysteriously, and went to and fro. People also came to see them, and related some event in detail. I tried hard to understand what had happened, but they hid the newspapers from me. When I asked Sidorov why they had killed the Czar he answered, softly:
"It is forbidden to speak of it."
But all this soon wore away. The old empty life was resumed, and I soon had a very unpleasant experience.
On one of those Sundays when the household had gone to early mass I set the samovar ready and turned my attention to tidying the rooms. While I was so occupied the eldest child rushed into the kitchen, removed the tap from the samovar, and set himself under the table to play with it. There was a lot of charcoal in the pipe of the samovar, and when the water had all trickled away from it, it came unsoldered. While I was doing the other rooms, I heard an unusual noise. Going into the kitchen, I saw with horror that the samovar was all blue. It was shaking, as if it wanted to jump from the floor. The broken handle of the tap was drooping miserably, the lid was all on one side, the pewter was melted and running away drop by drop. In fact the purplish blue samovar looked as if it had drunken shivers. I poured water over it. It hissed, and sank sadly in ruins on the floor.
The front door-bell rang. I went to open the door. In answer to the old lady's question as to whether the samovar was ready, I replied briefly:
"Yes; it is ready."
These words, spoken, of course, in my confusion and terror, were taken for insolence. My punishment was doubled. They half killed me. The old lady beat me with a bunch of fir-twigs, which did not hurt much, but left under the skin of my back a great many splinters, driven in deeply. Before night my back was swollen like a pillow, and by noon the next day the master was obliged to take me to the hospital.
When the doctor, comically tall and thin, examined me, he said in a calm, dull voice:
"This is a case of cruelty which will have to be investigated."
My master blushed, shuffled his feet, and said something in a low voice to the doctor, who looked over his head and said shortly:
"I can't. It is impossible."
Then he asked me:
"Do you want to make a complaint?"
I was in great pain, but I said:
"No, make haste and cure me."
They took me into another room, laid me on a table, and the doctor pulled out the splinters with pleasantly cold pincers. He said, jestingly:
"They have decorated your skin beautifully, my friend; now you will be waterproof."
When he had finished his work of pricking me unmercifully, he said:
"Forty-two splinters have been taken out, my friend. Remember that. It is something to boast of! Come back at the same time to-morrow to have the dressing replaced. Do they often beat you?"
I thought for a moment, then said:
"Not so often as they used to."
The doctor burst into a hoarse laugh.
"It is all for the best, my friend, all for the best." When he took me back to my master he said to him:
"I hand him over to you; he is repaired. Bring him back to-morrow without fail. I congratulate you. He is a comical fellow you have there."
When we were in the cab my master said to me:
"They used to beat me too, Pyeshkov. What do you think of that? They did beat me, my lad! And you have me to pity you; but I had no one, no one. People are very hard everywhere; but one gets no pity--no, not from any one. Ekh! Wild fowl!"
He grumbled all the way home. I was very sorry for him, and grateful to him for treating me like a man.
They welcomed me at the house as if it had been my name-day. The women insisted on hearing in detail how the doctor had treated me and what he had said. They listened and sighed, then kissed me tenderly, wrinkling their brows. This intense interest in illness, pain, and all kinds of unpleasantness always amazed me.
I saw that they were pleased with me for not complaining of them, and I took advantage of the moment to ask if I might have some books from the tailor's wife. They did not have the heart to refuse me. Only the old lady cried in surprise:
"What a demon he is!"
The next day I stood before the tailor's wife, who said to me kindly:
"They told me that you were ill, and that you had been taken to hospital. You see what stories get about."
I was silent. I was ashamed to tell her the truth. Why should she know of such sad and coarse things? It was nice to think that she was different from other people.
Once more I read the thick books of Dumas _père_, Ponson de Terraille, Montepaine, Zakonier, Gaboriau, and Bourgobier. I devoured all these books quickly, one after the other, and I was happy. I felt myself to be part of a life which was out of the ordinary, which stirred me sweetly and aroused my courage. Once more I burned my improvised candle, and read all through the night till the morning, so that my eyes began to hurt me a little. The old mistress said to me kindly:
"Take care, bookworm. You will spoil your sight and grow blind!"
However, I soon realized that all these interestingly complicated books, despite the different incidents, and the various countries and towns about which they were written, had one common theme: good people made unhappy and oppressed by bad people, the latter were always more successful and clever than the good, but in the end something unexpected always overthrowing the wicked, and the good winning. The "love," of which both men and women spoke in the same terms, bored me. In fact, it was not only uninteresting to me, but it aroused a vague contempt.
Sometimes from the very first chapters I began to wonder who would win or who would be vanquished, and as soon as the course of the story became clear, I would set myself to unravel the skein of events by the aid of my own fancy. When I was not reading I was thinking of the books I had on hand, as one would think about the problems in an arithmetic. I became more skilful every day in guessing which of the characters would enter into the paradise of happiness and which would be utterly confounded.
But through all this I saw the glimmer of living and, to me, significant truths, the outlines of another life, other standards. It was clear to me that in Paris the cabmen, working men, soldiers, and all "black people"[1] were not at all as they were in Nijni, Kazan, or Perm. They dared to speak to gentlefolk, and behaved toward them more simply and independently than our people. Here, for example, was a soldier quite unlike any I had known, unlike Sidorov, unlike the Viatskian on the boat, and still more unlike Ermokhin. He was more human than any of these. He had something of Smouri about him, but he was not so savage and coarse. Here was a shopkeeper, but he was much better than any of the shopkeepers I had known. And the priests in books were not like the priests I knew. They had more feeling, and seemed to enter more into the lives of their flocks. And in general it seemed to me that life abroad, as it appeared in books, was more interesting, easier, better than the life I knew. Abroad, people did not behave so brutally. They never jeered at other human creatures as cruelly as the Viatskian soldier had been jeered at, nor prayed to God as importunately as the old mistress did. What I noticed particularly was that, when villains, misers, and low characters were depicted in books, they did not show that incomprehensible cruelty, that inclination to jeer at humanity, with which I was acquainted, and which was often brought to my notice. There was method in the cruelty of these bookish villains. One could almost always understand why they were cruel; but the cruelty which I witnessed was aimless, senseless, an amusement from which no one expected to gain any advantage.
[Footnote 1: The common people.]
With every book that I read this dissimilarity between Russian life and that of other countries stood out more clearly, causing a perplexed feeling of irritation within me, strengthening my suspicion of the veracity of the old, well-read pages with their dirty "dogs'-ears."
And then there fell into my hands Goncourt's novel, "The Brothers Zemganno." I read it through in one night, and, surprised at the new experience, read the simple, pathetic story over again. There was nothing complicated about it, nothing interesting at first sight. In fact, the first pages seemed dry, like the lives of the saints. Its language, so precise and stripped of all adornment, was at first an unpleasant surprise to me; but the paucity of words, the strongly constructed phrases, went straight to the heart. It so aptly described the drama of the acrobat brothers that my hands trembled with the enjoyment of reading the book. I wept bitterly as I read how the unfortunate artist, with his legs broken, crept up to the loft where his brother was secretly engaged in his favorite art.
When I returned this glorious book to the tailor's wife I begged her to give me another one like it.
"How do you mean like that?" she asked, laughing.
This laugh confused me, and I could not explain what I wanted. Then she said:
"That is a dull book. Just wait! I will give you another more interesting."
In the course of a day or two she gave me Greenwood's "The True History of a little Waif." The title of the book at first turned me against it, but the first pages called up a smile of joy, and still smiling, I read it from beginning to end, re-reading some of the pages two or three times.
So in other countries, also, boys lived hard and harassing lives! After all, I was not so badly off; I need not complain.
Greenwood gave me a lot of courage, and soon after that I was given a "real" book, "Eugénie Grandet."
_Old Grandet_ reminded me vividly of grandfather. I was annoyed that the book was so small, and surprised at the amount of truth it contained. Truths which were familiar and boring to me in life were shown to me in a different light in this book, without malice and quite calmly. All the books which I had read before Greenwood's, condemned people as severely and noisily as my employers did, often arousing my sympathy for the villain and a feeling of irritation with the good people. I was always sorry to see that despite enormous expenditure of intelligence and willpower, a man still failed to obtain his desires. The good characters stood awaiting events from first to last page, as immovable as stone pillars, and although all kinds of evil plots were formed against these stone pillars, stones do not arouse sympathy. No matter how beautiful and strong a wall may be, one does not love it if one wants to get the apple on the tree on the other side of it. It always seemed to me that all that was most worth having, and vigorous was hidden behind the "good" people.
In Goncourt, Greenwood, and Balzac there were no villains, but just simple people, wonderfully alive. One could not doubt that, whatever they were alleged to have said and done, they really did say and do, and they could not have said and done anything else.
In this fashion I learned to understand what a great treat a "good and proper" book can be. But how to find it? The tailor's wife could not help me in this.
"Here is a good book," she said, laying before me Arsène Huissier's "Hands full of Roses, Gold, and Blood." She also gave me the novels of Beyle, Paul de Kock and Paul Féval, and I read them all with relish. She liked the novels of Mariette and Vernier, which to me appeared dull. I did not care for Spielhagen, but I was much taken with the stories of Auerbach. Sue and Huga, also, I did not like, preferring Walter Scott. I wanted books which excited me, and made me feel happy, like wonderful Balzac.
I did not care for the porcelain woman as much as I had done at first. When I went to see her, I put on a clean shirt, brushed my hair, and tried to appear good-looking. In this I was hardly successful. I always hoped that, seeing my good looks, she would speak to me in a simple and friendly manner, without that hsh-like smile on her frivolous face. But all she did was to smile and ask me in her sweet, tired voice:
"Have you read it? Did you like it?"
"No."
Slightly raising her eyebrows, she looked at me, and, drawing in her breath, spoke through her nose.
"But why?"
"I have read about all that before."
"Above what?"
"About love."
Her eyes twinkled, as she burst out into her honeyed laugh.
"_Ach_, but you see all books are written about love!"
Sitting in a big arm-chair, she swung her small feet, incased in fur slippers, to and fro, yawned, wrapped her blue dressing-gown around her, and drummed with her pink fingers on the cover of the book on her knee. I wanted to say to her:
"Why don't you leave this flat? The officers write letters to you, and laugh at you."
But I had not the audacity to say this, and went away, bearing with me a thick book on "Love," a sad sense of disenchantment in my heart.
They talked about this woman in the yard more evilly, derisively, and spitefully than ever. It offended me to hear these foul and, no doubt, lying stories. When I was away from her, I pitied the woman, and suffered for her; but when I was with her, and saw her small, sharp eyes, the cat-like flexibility of her small body, and that always frivolous face, pity and fear disappeared, vanished like smoke.
In the spring she suddenly went away, and in a few days her husband moved to new quarters.
While the rooms stood empty, awaiting a new tenant, I went to look at the bare walls, with their square patches where pictures had hung, bent nails, and wounds made by nails. Strewn about the stained floor were pieces of different-colored cloth, balls of paper, broken boxes from the chemist, empty scent-bottles. A large brass pin gleamed in one spot.
All at once I felt sad and wished that I could see the tailor's little wife once more to tell her how grateful I was to her.
CHAPTER X
Before the departure of the tailor's wife there had come to live under the flat occupied by my employers a black-eyed young lady, with her little girl and her mother, a gray-haired old woman, everlastingly smoking cigarettes in an amber mouthpiece. The young lady was very beautiful, imperious, and proud. She spoke in a pleasant, deep voice. She looked at every one with head held high and unblinking eyes, as if they were all far away from her, and she could hardly see them. Nearly every day her black soldier-servant, Tuphyaev, brought a thin-legged, brown horse to the steps of her flat. The lady came out in a long, steel-colored, velvet dress, wearing white gauntleted gloves and tan boots. Holding the train of her skirt and a whip with a lilac-colored stone in its handle in one hand, with the other little hand she lovingly stroked the horse's muzzle. He fixed his great eyes upon her, trembling all over, and softly trampled the soaked ground under his hoofs.
"Robaire, Robaire," she said in a low voice, and patted the beautiful, arched neck of the steed with a firm hand.
Then setting her foot on the knee of Tuphyaev, she sprang lightly into the saddle, and the horse, prancing proudly, went through the gateway. She sat in the saddle as easily as if she were part of it. She was beautiful with that rare kind of beauty which always seems new and wonderful, and always fills the heart with an intoxicating joy. When I looked at her I thought that Diana of Poitiers, Queen Margot, the maiden La Vallière, and other beauties, heroines of historical novels, were like her.
She was constantly surrounded by the officers of the division which was stationed in the town, and in the evenings they used to visit her, and play the piano, violin, guitar, and dance and sing. The most frequent of her visitors was Major Olessov, who revolved about her on his short legs, stout, red-faced, gray-haired, and as greasy as an engineer on a steamboat. He played the guitar well, and bore himself as the humble, devoted servant of the lady.
As radiantly beautiful as her mother was the little five-year-old, curly-haired, chubby girl. Her great, dark-blue eyes looked about her gravely, calmly expectant, and there was an air of thoughtfulness about her which was not at all childish.
Her grandmother was occupied with housekeeping from morning to night, with the help of Tuphyaev, a morose, taciturn man, and a fat, cross-eyed housemaid. There was no nursemaid, and the little girl lived almost without any notice being taken of her, playing about all day on the front steps or on a heap of planks near them. I often went out to play with her in the evenings, for I was very fond of her. She soon became used to me, and would fall asleep in my arms while I was telling her a story. When this happened, I used to carry her to bed. Before long it came about that she would not go to sleep, when she was put to bed, unless I went to say good night to her. When I went to her, she would hold out her plump hand with a grand air and say:
"Good-by till to-morrow. Grandmother, how ought I to say it?"
"God preserve you!" said the grandmother, blowing a cloud of dark-blue smoke from her mouth and thin nose.
"God preserve you till to-morrow! And now I am going to sleep," said the little girl, rolling herself up in the bedclothes, which were trimmed with lace.
The grandmother corrected her.
"Not till to-morrow, but for always."
"But does n't to-morrow mean for always?"
She loved the word "to-morrow," and whatever pleased her specially she carried forward into the future. She would stick into the ground flowers that had been plucked or branches that had been broken by the wind, and say:
"To-morrow this will be a garden."
"To-morrow, some time, I shall buy myself a horse, and ride on horseback like mother."
She was a clever child, but not very lively, and would often break off in the midst of a merry game to become thoughtful, or ask unexpectedly:
"Why do priests have hair like women?"
If she stung herself with nettles, she would shake her finger at them, saying:
"You wait! I shall pray God to do something vewy bady to you. God can do bad things to every one; He can even punish mama." Sometimes a soft, serious melancholy descended upon her. She would press close to me, gazing up at the sky with her blue, expectant eyes, and say:
"Sometimes grandmother is cross, but mama never; she on'y laughs. Every one loves her, because she never has any time. People are always coming to see her and to look at her because she is so beautiful. She is 'ovely, mama is. 'Oseph says so--'ovely!"
I loved to listen to her, for she spoke of a world of which I knew nothing. She spoke willingly and often about her mother, and a new life gradually opened out before me. I was again reminded of Queen Margot, which deepened my faith in books and also my interest in life. One day when I was sitting on the steps waiting for my people, who had gone for a walk, and the little girl had dozed off in my arms, her mother rode up on horseback, sprang lightly to the ground, and, throwing back her head, asked:
"What, is she asleep?"
"Yes."
"That's right."
The soldier Tuphyaev came running to her and took the horse. She stuck her whip into her belt and, holding out her arms, said:
"Give her to me!"
"I'll carry her in myself."
"Come on!" cried the lady, as if I had been a horse, and she stamped her foot on the step.
The little girl woke up, blinking, and, seeing her mother, held out her arms to her. They went away.
I was used to being shouted at, but I did not like this lady to shout at me. She had only to give an order quietly, and every one obeyed her.
In a few minutes the cross-eyed maid came out for me. The little girl was naughty, and would not go to sleep without saying good night.
It was not without pride in my bearing toward the mother that I entered the drawing-room, where the little girl was sitting on the knees of her mother, who was deftly undressing her.
"Here he is," she said. "He has come--this monster."
"He is not a monster, but my boy."
"Really? Very good. Well, you would like to give something to your boy, would n't you?"
"Yes, I should."
"A good idea! I will see to it, and you will go to bed."
"Good-by till to-morrow," said the little girl, holding out her hand to me. "God preserve you till to-morrow!"
The lady exclaimed in surprise:
"Who taught you to say that? Grandmother?"
"Ye-es."
When the child had left the room the lady beckoned to me.
"What shall we give you?"
I told her that I did not want anything; but could she let me have a book to read?
She lifted my chin with her warm, scented fingers, and asked, with a pleasant smile:
"So you are fond of reading? Yes; what books have you read?"
When she smiled she looked more beautiful than ever. I confusedly told her the names of several books.
"What did you find to like in them?" she asked, laying her hand on the table and moving her fingers slightly.
A strong, sweet smell of some sort of flowers came from her, mixed with the odor of horse-sweat. She looked at me through her long eyelashes, thoughtfully grave. No one had ever looked at me like that before.
The room was packed as tightly as a bird's nest with beautiful, soft furniture. The windows were covered with thick green curtains; the snowy white tiles of the stove gleamed in the half-light; beside the stove shone the glossy surface of a black piano; and from the walls, in dull-gold frames, looked dark writings in large Russian characters. Under each writing hung a large dark seal by a cord. Everything about her looked at that woman as humbly and timidly as I did.
I explained to her as well as I could that my life was hard and uninteresting and that reading helped me to forget it.
"Yes; so that's what it is," she said, standing up. "It is not a bad idea, and, in fact, it is quite right. Well, what shall we do? I will get some books for you, but just now I have none. But wait! You can have this one."
She took a tattered book with a yellow cover from the couch.
"When you have read this I will give you the second volume; there are four."
I went away with the "Secrets of Peterburg," by Prince Meshtcheski, and began to read the book with great attention. But before I had read many pages I saw that the Peterburgian "secrets" were considerably less interesting than those of Madrid, London, or Paris. The only part which took my fancy was the fable of _Svoboda_ (Liberty) and _Palka_ (stick).
"I am your superior," said _Svoboda_, "because I am cleverer."
But _Palka_ answered her:
"No, it is I who am your superior, because I am stronger than you."
They disputed and disputed and fought about it. _Palka_ beat _Svoboda_, and, if I remember rightly, _Svoboda_ died in the hospital as the result of her injuries.
There was some talk of nihilists in this book. I remember that, according to Prince Meshtcheski, a nihilist was such a poisonous person that his very glance would kill a fowl. What he wrote about nihilists struck me as being offensive and rude, but I understood nothing else, and fell into a state of melancholy. It was evident that I could not appreciate good books; for I was convinced that it was a good book. Such a great and beautiful lady could never read bad books.
"Well, did you like it?" she asked me when I took back the yellow novel by Meshtcheski.
I found it very hard to answer no; I thought it would make her angry. But she only laughed, and going behind the _portière_ which led into her sleeping-chamber, brought back a little volume in a binding of dark-blue morocco leather.
"You will like this one, only take care not to soil it."
This was a volume of Pushkin's poems. I read all of them at once, seizing upon them with a feeling of greed such as I experienced whenever I happened to visit a beautiful place that I had never seen before. I always tried to run all over it at once. It was like roaming over mossy hillocks in a marshy wood, and suddenly seeing spread before one a dry plain covered with flowers and bathed in sun-rays. For a second one gazes upon it enchanted, and then one begins to race about happily, and each contact of one's feet with the soft growth of the fertile earth sends a thrill of joy through one.
Pushkin had so surprised me with the simplicity and music of poetry that for a long time prose seemed unnatural to me, and it did not come easy to read it. The prologue to "Ruslan" reminded me of grandmother's best stories, all wonderfully compressed into one, and several lines amazed me by their striking truth.
There, by ways which few observe, Are the trails of invisible wild creatures.
I repeated these wonderful words in my mind, and I could see those footpaths so familiar to me, yet hardly visible to the average being. I saw the mysterious footprints which had pressed down the grass, which had not had time to shake off the drops of dew, as heavy as mercury. The full, sounding lines of poetry were easily remembered. They adorned everything of which they spoke as if for a festival. They made me happy, my life easy and pleasant. The verses rang out like bells heralding me into a new life. What happiness it was to be educated!
The magnificent stories of Pushkin touched me more closely, and were more intelligible to me than anything I had read. When I had read them a few times I knew them by heart, and when I went to bed I whispered the verses to myself, with my eyes closed, until I fell asleep. Very often I told these stories to the orderlies, who listened and laughed, and abused me jokingly. Sidorov stroked my head and said softly:
"That's fine, is n't it? O Lord--"
The awakening which had come to me was noticed by my employers. The old lady scolded me.
"You read too much, and you have not cleaned the samovar for four days, you young monkey! I shall have to take the rolling-pin to you--"
What did I care for the rolling-pin? I took refuge in verses.
Loving black evil with all thy heart, O old witch that thou art!
The lady rose still higher in my esteem. See what books she read! She was not like the tailor's porcelain wife.
When I took back the book, and handed it to her with regret, she said in a tone which invited confidence:
"Did you like it? Had you heard of Pushkin before?"
I had read something about the poet in one of the newspapers, but I wanted her to tell me about him, so I said that I had never heard of him.
Then she briefly told me the life and death of Pushkin, and asked, smiling like a spring day:
"Do you see how dangerous it is to love women?"
All the books I had read had shown me it was really dangerous, but also pleasant, so I said:
"It is dangerous, yet every one falls in love. And women suffer for love, too."
She looked at me, as she looked at every one, through her lashes, and said gravely:
"You think so? You understand that? Then the best thing I can wish you is that you may not forget it."
And then she asked me what verses I liked best.
I began to repeat some from memory, with gesticulations. She listened silently and gravely, then rose, and, walking up and down the room, said thoughtfully:
"We shall have to have you taught, my little wild animal. I must think about it. Your employers--are they relatives of yours?"
When I answered in the affirmative she exclaimed: "Oh!" as if she blamed me for it.
She gave me "The Songs of Béranger," a special edition with engravings, gilt edges, and a red leather binding. These songs made me feel giddy, with their strange mixture of bitter grief and boisterous happiness.
With a cold chill at my heart I read the bitter words of "The Old Beggar."
Homeless worm, have I disturbed you? Crush me under your feet! Why be pitiful? Crush me quickly! Why is it that you have never taught me, Nor given me an outlet for my energy? From the grub an ant might have come. I might have died in the love of my fellows. But dying as an old tramp, I shall be avenged on the world!
And directly after this I laughed till I cried over the "Weeping Husband." I remembered especially the words of Béranger:
A happy science of life Is not hard for the simple.
Béranger aroused me to moods of joyfulness, to a desire to be saucy, and to say something rude to people,--rude, sharp words. In a very short time I had become proficient in this art. His verses I learned by heart, and recited them with pleasure to the orderlies, running into the kitchen, where they sat for a few minutes at a time.
But I soon had to give this up because the lines,
But such a hat is not becoming To a young girl of seventeen,
gave rise to an offensive conversation about girls that made me furiously disgusted, and I hit the soldier Ermokhin over the head with a saucepan. Sidorov and the other orderlies tore me away from his clumsy hands, but I made up my mind from that time to go no more to the officers' kitchen.
I was not allowed to walk about the streets. In fact, there was no time for it, since the work had so increased. Now, in addition to my usual duties as housemaid, yardman, and errand-boy, I had to nail calico to wide boards, fasten the plans thereto, and copy calculations for my master's architectural work. I also had to verify the contractor's accounts, for my master worked from morning to night, like a machine.
At that time the public buildings of the _Yarmarka_[1] were private property. Rows of shops were built very rapidly, and my master had the contracts for the reconstruction of old shops and the erection of new ones. He drew up plans for the rebuilding of vaults, the throwing out of a dormer-window, and such changes. I took the plans to an old architect, together with an envelop in which was hidden paper money to the value of twenty-five rubles. The architect took the money, and wrote under the plans: "The plans are correct, and the inspection of the work has been performed by me. Imraik." As a matter of fact, he had not seen the original of the plans, and he could not inspect the work, as he was always obliged to stay at home by reason of his malady.
[Footnote 1: Market-place.]
I used to take bribes to the inspector of the _Yarmarka_ and to other necessary people, from whom I received what the master called papers, which permitted all kinds of illegalities. For this service I obtained the right to wait for my employers at the door on the front steps when they went out to see their friends in the evenings. This did not often happen, but when it did, they never returned until after midnight. I used to sit at the top of the steps, or on the heap of planks opposite them, for hours, looking into the windows of my lady's flat, thirstily listening to the gay conversation and the music.
The windows were open. Through the curtains and the screen of flowers I could see the fine figures of officers moving about the room. The rotund major waddled about, and she floated about, dressed with astonishing simplicity, but beautifully.
In my own mind I called her "Queen Margot."
"This is the gay life that they write about in French books," I thought, looking in at the window. And I always felt rather sad about it. A childish jealousy made it painful for me to see "Queen Margot" surrounded by men, who buzzed about her like bees over flowers.
Her least-frequent visitor was a tall, unhappy-looking officer, with a furrowed brow and deep-sunken eyes, who always brought his violin with him and played marvelously--so marvelously that the passers-by used to stop under the window, and all the dwellers in the street used to gather round. Even my employers, if they happened to be at home, would open the window, listen, and praise. I never remember their praising any one else except the subdeacon of the cathedral, and I knew that a fish-pie was more pleasing to them than any kind of music.
Sometimes this officer sang, or recited verses in a muffled voice, sighing strangely and pressing his hand to his brow. Once when I was playing under the window with the little girl and "Queen Margot" asked him to sing, he refused for a long time. Then he said clearly:
"Only a song has need of beauty, While beauty has no need of songs."
I thought these lines were lovely, and for some reason I felt sorry for the officer.
What I liked best was to look at my lady when she sat at the piano, alone in the room, and played. Music intoxicated me, and I could see nothing but the window, and beyond that, in the yellow light of the lamp, the finely formed figure of the woman, with her haughty profile and her white hands hovering like birds over the keys. I gazed at her, listened to the plaintive music, and dreamed. If I could find some treasure, I would give it all to her, so that she should be rich. If I had been Skobelev, I would have declared war on the Turks again. I would have taken money for ransoms, and built a house for her on the Otkossa, the best site in the whole town, and made her a present of it. If only she would leave this street, where every one talked offensively about her. The neighbors, the servants belonging to our yard, and my employers more than all spoke about "Queen Margot" as evilly and spitefully as they had talked about the tailor's wife, though more cautiously, with lowered voices, and looking about them as they spoke.
They were afraid of her, probably because she was the widow of a very distinguished man. The writings on the walls of her rooms, too, were privileges bestowed on her husband's ancestors by the old Russian emperors Goudonov, Alexei, and Peter the Great. This was told me by the soldier Tuphyaev, a man of education, who was always reading the gospels. Or it may have been that people were afraid lest she should thrash them with her whip with the lilac-colored stone in the handle. It was said that she had once struck a person of position with it.
But words uttered under the breath are no better than words uttered aloud. My lady lived in a cloud of enmity--an enmity which I could not understand and which tormented me.
Now that I knew there was another life; that there were different people, feelings, and ideas, this house and all its tenants aroused in me a feeling of disgust that oppressed me more and more. It was entangled in the meshes of a dirty net of disgraceful tittle-tattle, there was not a single person in it of whom evil was not spoken. The regimental chaplain, though he was ill and miserable, had a reputation for being a drunkard and a rake; the officers and their wives were living, according to my employers, in a state of sin; the soldiers' conversation about women, which ran on the same lines, had become repulsive to me. But my employers disgusted me most of all. I knew too well the real value of their favorite amusement, namely, the merciless judgment of other people. Watching and commenting on the crimes of others was the only amusement in which they could indulge without paying for it. They amused themselves by putting those about them verbally on the rack, and, as it were, revenged themselves on others because they lived so piously, laboriously, and uninterestingly themselves.
When they spoke vilely about "Queen Margot" I was seized by a convulsion of feeling which was not childish at all. My heart swelled with hatred for the backbiters. I was overcome by an irresistible desire to do harm to every one, to be insolent, and sometimes a flood of tormenting pity for myself and every one else swept over me. That dumb pity was more painful than hatred.
I knew more about my queen than they did, and I was always afraid that they would find out what I knew.
On Sundays, when my employers had gone to the cathedral for high mass, I used to go to her the first thing in the morning. She would call me into her bedroom, and I sat in a small arm-chair, upholstered in gold-colored silk, with the little girl on my knee, and told the mother about the books I had read. She lay in a wide bed, with her cheek resting on her small hands, which were clasped together. Her body was hidden under a counterpane, gold in color, like everything else in the bedroom; her dark hair lay in a plait over her swarthy shoulder and her breast, and sometimes fell over the side of the bed till it touched the floor.
As she listened to me she looked into my face with her soft eyes and a hardly perceptible smile and said:
"That's right."
Even her kind smile was, in my eyes, the condescending smile of a queen. She spoke in a deep, tender voice, and it seemed to me that it said always:
"I know that I am immeasurably above all other people; no one of them is necessary to me."
Sometimes I found her before her mirror, sitting in a low chair and doing her hair, the ends of which lay on her knees, over the arms, and back of the chair, and fell almost to the floor. Her hair was as long and thick as grandmother's. She put on her stockings in my presence, but her clean nudity aroused in me no feeling of shame. I had only a joyful feeling of pride in her. A flowerlike smell always came from her, protecting her from any evil thoughts concerning her.
I felt sure that the love of the kitchen and the pantry was unknown to Queen Margot. She knew something different, a higher joy, a different kind of love.
But one day, late in the afternoon, on going into her drawing-room, I heard from the bedroom the ringing laugh of the lady of my heart. A masculine voice said:
"Wait a minute! Good Lord! I can't believe--"
I ought to have gone away. I knew that, but I could not.
"Who is that?" she asked. "You? Come in!"
The bedroom was heavy with the odor of flowers. It was darkened, for the curtains were drawn. Queen Margot lay in bed, with the bedclothes drawn up to her chin, and beside her, against the wall, sat, clad only in his shirt, with his chest bared, the officer violinist. On his breast was a scar which lay like a red streak from the right shoulder to the nipple and was so vivid that even in the half-light I could see it distinctly. The hair of the officer was ruffled comically, and for the first time I saw a smile on his sad, furrowed countenance. He was smiling strangely. His large, feminine eyes looked at the "queen" as if it were the first time he had gazed upon her beauty.
"This is my friend," said Queen Margot. I did not know whether she were referring to me or to him.
"What are you looking so frightened about?" I heard her voice as if from a distance. "Come here."
When I went to her she placed her hands on my bare neck and said:
"You will grow up and you will be happy. Go along!"
I put the book on the shelf, took another, and went away as best I could.
Something seemed to grate in my heart. Of course I did not think for a moment that my queen loved as other women nor did the officer give me reason to think so. I saw his face before me, with that smile. He was smiling for joy, like a child who has been pleasantly surprised, and his sad face was wonderfully transfigured. He had to love her. Could any one not love her? And she also had cause to bestow her love upon him generously. He played so wonderfully, and could quote poetry so touchingly.
But the very fact that I had to find these consolations showed me clearly that all was not well with my attitude toward what I had seen or even toward Queen Margot herself. I felt that I had lost something, and I lived for several days in a state of deep dejection. One day I was turbulently and recklessly insolent, and when I went to my lady for a book, she said to me sternly:
"You seem to be a desperate character from what I have heard. I did not know that."
I could not endure this, and I began to explain how nauseating I found the life I had to lead, and how hard it was for me to hear people speaking ill of her. Standing in front of me, with her hand on my shoulder, she listened at first attentively and seriously; but soon she was laughing and pushing me away from her gently.
"That will do; I know all about it. Do you understand? I know."
Then she took both my hands and said to me very tenderly:
"The less attention you pay to all that, the better for you. You wash your hands very badly."
She need not have said this. If she had had to clean the brasses, and wash the floor and the dirty cloths, her hands would not have been any better than mine, I think.
"When a person knows how to live, he is slandered; they are jealous of him. And if he doesn't know how to live, they despise him," she said thoughtfully, drawing me to her, and looking into my eyes with a smile. "Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"Very much?"
"Yes."
"But how?"
"I don't know."
"Thank you! You are a good boy. I like people to love me." She smiled, looked as if she were going to say something more, but remained silent, still keeping me in her arms. "Come oftener to see me; come whenever you can."
I took advantage of this, and she did me a lot of good. After dinner my employers used to lie down, and I used to run down-stairs. If she was at home, I would stay with her for an hour and sometimes even longer.
"You must read Russian books; you must know all about Russian life."
She taught me, sticking hair-pins into her fragrant hair with rosy fingers. And she enumerated the Russian authors, adding:
"Will you remember them?"
She often said thoughtfully, and with an air of slight vexation:
"We must have you taught, and I am always forgetting. _Ach_, my God!"
After sitting with her, I ran down-stairs with a new book in my hands, feeling as if I had been washed inside.
I had already read Aksakov's "Family Chronicle," the glorious Russian poem "In the Forests," the amazing "Memoirs of a Hunter," several volumes of Grebenkov and Solugub, and the poetry of Venevitinov, Odoevski, and Tutchev. These books laved my soul, washing away the husks of barren and bitter reality. I felt that these were good books, and realized that they were indispensable to me. One result of reading them was that I gained a firm conviction that I was not alone in the world, and the fact that I should not be lost took root in my soul.
When grandmother came to see me I used to tell her joyfully about Queen Margot, and she, taking a pinch of snuff with great enjoyment, said heartily:
"Well, well; that is very nice. You see, there are plenty of good people about. You only have to look for them, and then you will find them."
And one day she suggested:
"How would it be if I went to her and said thank you for what she does for you?"
"No; it is better not."
"Well, if you don't want me to----Lord! Lord! how good it all is! I would like to go on living for ever and ever!"
Queen Margot never carried out her project of having me taught, for an unpleasant affair happened on the feast of the Holy Trinity that nearly ruined me.
Not long before the holiday my eyelids became terribly swollen, and my eyes were quite closed up. My employers were afraid that I should go blind, and I also was afraid. They took me to the well-known doctor, Genrikh Rodzevich, who lanced my eyelids and for days I lay with my eyes bandaged, in tormenting, black misery. The day before the feast of the Trinity my bandages were taken off, and I walked about once more, feeling as if I had come back from a grave in which I had been laid alive. Nothing can be more terrible than to lose one's sight. It is an unspeakable injury which takes away a hundred worlds from a man.
The joyful day of the Holy Trinity arrived, and, as an invalid, I was off duty from noon and went to the kitchen to pay a visit to the orderlies. All of them, even the strict Tuphyaev, were drunk, and toward evening Ermokhin struck Sidorov on the head with a block of wood. The latter fell senseless to the ground, and Ermokhin, terrified, ran out to the causeway.
An alarming rumor that Sidorov had been murdered soon spread over the yard. People gathered on the steps and looked at the soldier stretched motionless across the threshold. There were whispers that the police ought to be sent for, but no one went to fetch them, and no one could be persuaded to touch the soldier.
Then the washerwoman Natalia Kozlovski, in a new, blue frock, with a white neckerchief, appeared on the scene. She pushed the people aside angrily, went into the entrance passage, squatted down, and said loudly:
"Fools! He is alive! Give me some water!"
They began to protest.
"Don't meddle with what is not your business!"
"Water, I tell you!" she cried, as if there were a fire. She lifted her new frock over her knees in a businesslike manner, spread out her underskirt, and laid the soldier's bleeding head on her knees.
The crowd dispersed, disapproving and fearful.
In the dim light of the passage I could see the eyes of the washerwoman full of tears, flashing angrily in her white, round face. I took her a pail of water, and she ordered me to throw it over the head and breast of Sidorov with the caution:
"Don't spill it over me. I am going to pay a visit to some friends."
The soldier came to himself, opened his dull eyes, and moaned.
"Lift him up," said Natalia, holding him under the armpits with her hands outstretched lest he should soil her frock. We carried the soldier into the kitchen and laid him on the bed. She wiped his face with a wet cloth, and went away, saying:
"Soak the cloth in water and hold it to his head. I will go and find that fool. Devils! I suppose they won't be satisfied until they have drunk themselves into prison."
She went out, after slipping her soiled underpetticoat to the floor, flinging it into a corner and carefully smoothing out her rustling, crumpled frock.
Sidorov stretched himself, hiccupped, sighed. Warm drops of thick blood fell on my bare feet from his head. This was unpleasant, but I was too frightened to move my feet away from those drops.
It was bitter. The sun shone festively out in the yard; the steps of the houses and the gate were decorated with young birch; to each pedestal were tied freshly cut branches of maple and mountain ash. The whole street was gay with foliage; everything was young, new. Ever since the morning I had felt that the spring holiday had come to stay, and that it had made life cleaner, brighter, and happier.
The soldier was sick. The stifling odor of warm vodka and green onion filled the kitchen. Against the window were pressed dull, misty, broad faces, with flattened noses, and hands held against their cheeks, which made them look hideous.
The soldier muttered as he recollected himself:
"What happened to me? Did I fall, Ermokhin? Go-o-od comrade!" Then he began to cough, wept drunken tears, and groaned, "My little sister! my little sister!"
He stood up, tottering, wet. He staggered, and, falling back heavily upon the bed, said, rolling his eyes strangely:
"They have quite killed me!"
This struck me as funny.
"What the devil are you laughing at?" he asked, looking at me dully. "What is there to laugh at? I am killed forever!"
He began to hit out at me with both hands, muttering:
"The first time was that of Elias the prophet; the second time, St. George on his steed; the third--Don't come near me! Go away, wolf!"
"Don't be a fool!" I said.
He became absurdly angry, roared, and stamped his feet.
"I am killed, and you--"
With his heavy, slow, dirty hand he struck me in the eyes. I set up a howl, and blindly made for the yard, where I ran into Natalia leading Ermokhin by the arm, crying: "Come along, horse! What is the matter with you?" she asked, catching hold of me.
"He has come to himself."
"Come to himself, eh?" she drawled in amazement. And drawing Ermokhin along, she said, "Well, werwolf, you may thank your God for this!"
I washed my eyes with water, and, looking through the door of the passage, saw the soldiers make their peace, embracing each other and crying. Then they both tried to embrace Natalia, but she hit out at them, shouting:
"Take your paws off me, curs! What do you take me for? Make haste and get to sleep before your masters come home, or there will be trouble for you!"
She made them lie down as if they were little children, the one on the floor, the other on the pallet-bed, and when they began to snore, came out into the porch.
"I am in a mess, and I was dressed to go out visiting, too! Did he hit you? What a fool! That's what it does--vodka! Don't drink, little fellow, never drink."
Then I sat on the bench at the gate with her, and asked how it was that she was not afraid of drunken people.
"I am not afraid of sober people, either. If they come near me, this is what they get!" She showed me her tightly clenched, red fist. "My dead husband was also given to drink too much, and once when he was drunk I tied his hands and feet. When he had slept it off, I gave him a birching for his health. 'Don't drink; don't get drunk when you are married,' I said. 'Your wife should be your amusement, and not vodka.' Yes, I scolded him until I was tired, and after that he was like wax in my hands."
"You are strong," I said, remembering the woman Eve, who deceived even God Himself.
Natalia replied, with a sigh:
"A woman needs more strength than a man. She has to have strength enough for two, and God has bestowed it upon her. Man is an unstable creature."
She spoke calmly, without malice, sitting with her arms folded over her large bosom, resting her back against the fence, her eyes fixed sadly on the dusty gutter full of rubbish. Listening to her clever talk, I forgot all about the time. Suddenly I saw my master coming along arm in arm with the mistress. They were walking slowly, pompously, like a turkey-cock with his hen, and, looking at us attentively, said something to each other.
I ran to open the front door for them, and as she came up the steps the mistress said to me, venomously:
"So you are courting the washerwoman? Are you learning to carry on with ladies of that low class?"
This was so stupid that it did not even annoy me but I felt offended when the master said, laughing:
"What do you expect? It is time."
The next morning when I went into the shed for the wood I found an empty purse, in the square hole which was made for the hook of the door. As I had seen it many times in the hands of Sidorov I took it to him at once.
"Where is the money gone?" he asked, feeling inside the purse with his fingers. "Thirty rubles there were! Give them here!"
His head was enveloped in a turban formed of a towel. Looking yellow and wasted, he blinked at me angrily with his swollen eyes, and refused to believe that I had found the purse empty.
Ermokhin came in and backed him up, shaking his head at me.
"It is he who has stolen it. Take him to his master. Soldiers do not steal from soldiers."
These words made me think that he had stolen the money himself and had thrown the purse into my shed. I called out to his face, without hesitation: