منتديات منابر ثقافية - عرض مشاركة واحدة

10-28-2011, 05:59 PM

المشاركة 18

ريم بدر الدين

عضو مجلس الإدارة سابقا

اوسمتي

مجموع الاوسمة: 5

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Chapter XI

AFTER this incident mother suddenly asserted herself, made a firm stand, and was soon mistress of the house, while grandfather, grown thoughtful and quiet, and quite unlike himself, became a person of no account.
He hardly ever went out of the house, but sat all day up in the attic reading, by stealth, a book called “The Writings of My Father.” He kept this book in a trunk under lock and key, and one day I saw him wash his hands before he took it out. It was a dumpy, fat book bound in red leather; on the dark blue title page a figured inscription in different colored inks flaunted itself: “To worthy Vassili Kashmirin, in gratitude, and sincere remembrance”; and underneath were written some strange surnames, while the frontispiece depicted a bird on the wing.
Carefully opening the heavy binding, grandfather used to put on his silver-rimmed spectacles, and gazing at the book, move his nose up and down for a long time, in order to get his spectacles at the right angle.
I asked him more than once what book it was that he was reading, but he only answered in an impressive tone:
“Never mind. . . . Wait a bit, and when I die it will come to you. I will leave you my racoon pelisse too.”
He began to speak to mother more gently, but less often; listening attentively to her speeches with his eyes glittering like Uncle Peter’s, and waving her aside as he muttered:
“There ! that ‘s enough. Do what you like . . .”
In that trunk of his lay many wonderful articles of attire skirts of silken material, padded satin jackets, sleeveless silk gowns, cloth of woven silver and head-bands sewn with pearls, brightly colored lengths of material and handkerchiefs, with necklaces of colored stones. He took them all, panting as he went, to mother’s room and laid them about on the chairs and tables clothes were mother’s delight and he said to her:
“In our young days dress was more beautiful and much richer than it is now. Dress was richer, and people seemed to get on better together. But these times are past and cannot be called back . . . well, here you are; take them, and dress yourself up.”
One day mother went to her room for a short time, and when she reappeared she was dressed in a dark blue sleeveless robe, embroidered with gold, with a pearl head-band ; and making a low obeisance to grandfather, she asked:
“Well, how does this suit you, my lord Father?” Grandfather murmured something, and brightening wonderfully, walked round her, holding up his hands, and said indistinctly, just as if he were talking in his sleep :
“Ech! Varvara! ... if you had plenty of money you would have the best people round you ... !”
Mother lived now in two front rooms in the half-house, and had a great many visitors, the most frequent being the brothers Maximov: Peter, a well-set-up, handsome officer with a large, light beard and blue eyes the very one before whom grandfather thrashed me for spitting on the old gentleman’s head; and Eugen, also tall and thin, with a pale face and a small, pointed beard. His large eyes were like plums, and he was dressed in a green coat with gold buttons and gold letters on his narrow shoulders. He often tossed his head lightly, throwing his long, wavy hair back from his high, smooth forehead, and smiled indulgently; and whenever he told some story in his husky voice, he invariably began his speech with these insinuating words : “Shall I tell you how it appears to me?” Mother used to listen to him with twinkling eyes, and frequently interrupted him laughingly with: “You are a baby, Eugen Vassilovitch forgive me for saying so !”
And the officer, slapping his broad palms on his knees, would cry:
“A queer sort of baby !”
The Christmas holidays were spent in noisy gaiety, and almost every evening people came to see mother in full dress ; or she put on gala dress better than any of them wore and went out with her guests.
Every time she left the house, in company with her gaily attired guests, it seemed to sink into the earth, and a terrifying silence seemed to creep into every corner of it. Grandmother flapped about the room like an old goose, putting everything straight. Grandfather stood with his back against the warm tiles of the stove, and talked to himself.
“Well . . . that will do ... very good! . . . We’ll have a look and see what family . . .”
After the Christmas holidays mother sent Sascha, Uncle Michael’s son, and me to school. Sascha’s father had married again, and from the very first the stepmother had taken a dislike to her stepson, and had begun to beat him; so at grandmother’s entreaty, grandfather had taken Sascha to live in his house. We went to school for a month, and all I learned, as far as I remember, was that when I was asked “What . is your surname?” I must not reply “Pyeshkov” simply, but “My surname is Pyeshkov.” And also that I must not say to the teacher: “Don’t shout at me, my dear fellow, I am not afraid of you !”
At first I did not like school, but my cousin was very pleased with it in the beginning, and easily made friends for himself; but once he fell asleep during a lesson, and suddenly called out in his sleep :
“I wo on’t!”
He awoke with a start and ran out of the class-room without ceremony. He was mercilessly laughed at for this; and the next day, when we were in the passage by Cyenvi Square, on our way to school, he came to a halt saying:
“You go on ... I am not coming ... I would rather go for a walk.”
He squatted on his heels, carelessly dug his bundle of books into the snow, and went off. It was a clear January day, and the silver rays of the sun fell all round me. I envied my cousin very much, but, hardening my heart, I went on to school. I did not want to grieve my mother. The books which Sascha buried disappeared, of course, so he had a valid reason for not going to school the next day; but on the third day his conduct was brought to grandfather’s notice. We were called up for judgment; in the kitchen grandfather, grandmother, and mother sat at the table and cross-examined us and I shall never forget how comically Sascha answered grandfather’s questions.
“Why didn’t you go to school?”
“I forgot where it was.”
“Forgot?”
“Yes. I looked and looked”
“But you went with Alexei; he remembered where it was.”
“And I lost him.”
“Lost Lexei?”
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?”
Sascha reflected a moment, and then said, drawing in his breath:
“There was a snowstorm, and you couldn’t see anything.”
They all smiled and the atmosphere began to clear ; even Sascha smiled cautiously. But grandfather said maliciously, showing his teeth:
“But you could have caught hold of his arm or his belt, couldn’t you?”
“I did catch hold of them, but the wind tore them away,” explained Sascha.
He spoke in a lazy, despondent tone, and I listened uncomfortably to this unnecessary, clumsy lie, amazed at his obstinacy.
We were thrashed, and a former fireman, an old man with a broken arm, was engaged to take us to school, and to watch that Sascha did not turn aside from the road of learning. But it was no use. The next day, as soon as my cousin reached the causeway, he stooped suddenly, and pulling off one of his high boots threw it a long way from him; then he took off the other and threw it in the opposite direction, and in his stockinged feet ran across the square. The old man, breathing hard, picked up the boots, and thereupon, terribly flustered, took me home.
All that day grandfather, grandmother, and my mother searched the town for the runaway, and it was evening before they found him in the bar at Tchirkov’s Tavern, entertaining the public by his dancing. They took him home, and actually did not beat the shaking, stubborn, silent lad; but as he lay beside me in the loft, with his legs up and the soles of his feet scraping against the ceiling, he said softly:
“My stepmother does not love me, nor my father. Grandfather does not love me either; why should I live with them? So I shall ask grandmother to tell me where the robbers live, and I shall run away to them . . . then you will understand, all of you. . . . Why shouldn’t we run away together?”
I could not run away with him, for in those days I had a work before me I had resolved to be an officer with a large, light beard, and for that study was indispensable. When I told my cousin of my plan, he agreed with me, on reflection.
“That ‘s a good idea too. By the time you are an officer I shall be a robber-chief, and you will have to capture me, and one of us will have to kill the other, or take him prisoner. I shan’t kill you.”
“Nor I you.”
On that point we were agreed.
Then grandmother came in, and climbing on to the stove, glanced up at us and said:
“Well, little mice? E ekh! Poor orphans! . . . Poor little mites !”
Having pitied us, she began to abuse Sascha’s step-mother fat Aunt Nadejda, daughter of the inn-keeper, going on to abuse stepmothers in general, and, apropos, told us the story of the wise hermit lona, and how when he was but a lad he was judged, with his step-mother, by an act of God. His father was a fisherman of the White Lake :
“By his young wife his ruin was wrought,
A potent liquor to him she brought,
Made of herbs which bring sleep.

She laid him, slumbering, in a bark
Of oak, like a grave, so close and dark,
And plied the maple oars.
In the lake’s center she dug a hole,
For there she had planned, in that dark pool,

To hide her vile witch deed.
Bent double she rocked from side to side,
And the frail craft o’erturned that witch bride !

And her husband sank deep.
And the witch swam quickly to the shore
And fell to the earth with wailings sore,

And womanly laments.
The good folk all, believing her tale,
Wept with the disconsolate female,

And in bitterness cried:
‘Oi ! As wife thy life was all too brief !
O’erwhelmed art thou by wifely grief;

But life is God’s affair.
Death too He sends when it doth please Him.’
Stepson lonushka alone looked grim,

Her tears not believing.
With his little hand upon his heart
He swiftly at her these words did dart:

‘Oi! Fateful stepmother!
Oi ! Artful night-bird, born to deceive !
Those tears of yours I do not believe !

It is joy you feel not pain.
But we’ll ask our Lord, my charge to prove,
And the aid of all the saints above.

Let some one take a knife,
And throw it up to the cloudless sky;
Blameless you, to me the knife will fly.

If I am right, you die!’
The stepmother turned her baleful gaze
On him, and with hate her eyes did blaze

As she rose to her feet.
And with vigor replied to the attack
Of her stepson, nor words did she lack.

‘Oh! creature without sense!
Abortion you ! fit for rubbish heap !
By this invention, what do you reap ?

Answer you cannot give !’
The good folk looked on, but nothing said;
Of this dark business they were afraid.

Sad and pensive they stood;
Then amongst themselves they held a debate,
And a fisherman old and sedate

Bowing, advanced and said:
‘In my right hand, good people, give me
A steel knife, which I will throw, and ye

Shall see on whom it falls.’
A knife to his hand was their reply.
High above his gray head, to the sky,

The sharp blade he did fling.
Like a bird, up in the air it went ;
Vainly they waited for its descent,

The crystal height scanning.

Their hats they doffed, and closer pressed they stood,
Silent ; yea, Night herself seemed to brood ;

But the knife did not fall.
The ruby dawn rose over the lake,
The stepmother, flushed, did courage take

And scornfully did smile.
When like a swallow the knife did dart
To earth, and fixed itself in her heart.

Down on their knees the people did fall
Praising God Who is Ruler of All :

‘Thou are just, O God !’
lona, the fisherman, did take,
And of him a hermit did make.

Far away by the bright River Kerjentza
In a cell almost invisible from the town Kite j a.” 1

1 In the year ‘90 in the village of Kolinpanovka, in the Government of Tambov, and the district Borisoglebsk, I heard another version of this legend, in which the knife kills the stepson who ha’s calumniated his stepmother.
The next day I woke up covered with red spots, and this was the beginning of smallpox.
They put me up in the back attic, and there I lay for a long time, blind, with my hands and feet tightly bandaged, living through horrible nightmares, in one of which I nearly died. No one but grandmother came near me, and she fed me with a spoon as if I were a baby, and told me stories, a fresh one every time, from her endless store.
One evening, when I was convalescent, and lay without bandages, except for my hands, which were tied up to prevent me from scratching my face, grandmother, for some reason or ‘other, had not come at her usual time, which alarmed me; and all of a sudden I saw her. She was lying outside the door on the dusty floor of the attic, face downwards, with her arms outspread, and her neck half sawed through, like Uncle Peter’s; while from the corner, out of the dusty twilight, there moved slowly towards her a great cat, with its green eyes greedily open. I sprang out of bed, bruising my legs and shoulders against the window-frame, and jumped down into the yard into a snowdrift. It happened to be an evening when mother had visitors, so no one heard the smashing of the glass, or the breaking of the window-frame, and I had to lie in the snow for some time. I had broken no bones, but I had dislocated my shoulder and cut myself very much with the broken glass, and I had lost the use of my legs, and for three months I lay utterly unable to move. I lay still and listened, and thought how noisy the house had become, how often they banged the doors downstairs, and what a lot of people seemed to be coming and going.
Heavy snowstorms swept over the roof; the wind came and went resoundingly outside the door, sang a funereal song down the chimney, and set the dampers rattling; by day the rooks cawed, and in the quiet night the doleful howling of wolves reached my ears such was the music under whose influence my heart developed. Later on shy spring peeped into the window with the radiant eyes of the March sun, timidly and gently at first, but growing bolder and warmer every day; she-cats sang and howled on the roof and in the loft; the rustle of spring penetrated the very walls the crystal icicles broke, the half-thawed snow fell off the stable-roof, and the bells began to give forth a sound less clear than they gave in winter. When grandmother came near me her words were more often impregnated with the odor of vodka, which grew stronger every day, until at length she began to bring a large white teapot with her and hide it under my bed, saying with a wink:
“Don’t you say anything to that grandfather of ours, will you, darling?”
“Why do you drink?”
“Never mind! When you are grown-up you’ll know.”
She pulled at the spout of the teapot, wiped her lips with her sleeve, and smiled sweetly as she asked:
“Well, my little gentleman, what do you want me to tell you about this evening?”
“About my father.”
“Where shall I begin?”
I reminded her, and her speech flowed on like a melodious stream for a long time.
She had begun to tell me about my father of her own accord one day when she had come to me, nervous, sad, and tired, saying:
“I have had a dream about your father. I thought I saw him coming across the fields, whistling, and followed by a piebald dog with its tongue hanging out. For some reason I have begun to dream about Maxim Savatyevitch very often ... it must mean that his soul is not at rest ...”
For several evenings in succession she told me my father’s history, which was interesting, as all her stories were.
My father was the son of a soldier who had worked his way up to be an officer and was banished to Siberia for cruelty to his subordinates; and there somewhere in Siberia my father was born. He had an unhappy life, and at a very early age he used to run away from home. Once grandfather set the dogs to track him down in the forest, as if he were a hare ; another time, having caught him, he beat him so unmercifully that the neighbors took the child away and hid him.
“Do they always beat children?” I asked, and grandmother answered quietly:
“Always.”
My father’s mother died early, and when he was nine years old grandfather also died, and he was taken by a cross-maker, who entered him on the Guild of the town of Perm and began to teach him his trade ; but my father ran away from him, and earned his living by leading blind people to the fairs. When he was sixteen he came to Nijni and obtained work with a joiner who was a contractor for the Kolchin steamboats. By the time he was twenty he was a skilled carpenter, upholsterer and decorator. The workshop in which he was employed was next door to grandfather’s house in Kovalikh Street.
“The fences were not high, and certain people were not backward,” said grandmother, laughing. “So one day, when Varia and I were picking raspberries in the garden, who should get over the fence but your father! ... I was frightened, foolishly enough; but there he went amongst the apple trees, a fine-looking fellow, in a white shirt, and plush breeches . . . bare-footed and hatless, with long hair bound with leather bands. That ‘s the way he came courting. When I saw him for the first time through the window, I said to myself: ‘That’s a nice lad!’ So when he came close to me now I asked him :
“‘Why do you come out of your way like this, young man?’
“And he fell on his knees. ‘Akulina, he says, Tvanovna ! . . . because my whole heart is here . . . with Varia. Help us, for God’s sake! We want to get married.’
“At this I was stupefied and my tongue refused to speak. I looked, and there was your mother, the rogue, hiding behind an apple tree, all red as red as the raspberries and making signs to him; but there were tears in her eyes.
“‘Oh, you rogues !’ I cried. ‘How have you managed all this? Are you in your senses, Varvara? And you, young man,’ I said, ‘think what you are doing! Do you intend to get your way by force?’
“At that time grandfather was rich, for he had not given his children their portions, and he had four houses of his own, and money, and he was ambitious; not long before that they had given him a laced hat and a uniform because he had been head of the Guild for nine years without a break and he was proud in those days. I said to them what it was my duty to say, but all the time I trembled for fear and felt very sorry for them too; they had both become so gloomy. Then said your father:
“‘I know quite well that Vassili Vassilitch will not consent to give Varia to me, so I shall steal her; only you must help us.’
“So I was to help them. I could not help laughing at him, but he would not be turned from his purpose. ‘You may stone me or you may help me, it is all the same to me I shall not give in,’ he said.
“Then Varvara went to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said : ‘We have been talking of getting married a long time we ought to have been married in May.’
“How I started ! Good Lord !”
Grandmother began to laugh, and her whole body shook; then she took a pinch of snuff, dried her eyes and said, sighing comfortably:
“You can’t understand that yet . . . you don’t know what marrying means . . . but this you can understand that for a girl to give birth to a child before she is married is a dreadful calamity. Remember that, and when you are grown-up never tempt a girl in that way ; it would be a great sin on your part the girl would be disgraced, and the child illegitimate. See that you don’t forget that ! You must be kind to women, and love them for their own sakes, and not for the sake of self-indulgence. This is good advice I am giving you.”
She fell into a reverie, rocking herself in her chair; then, shaking herself, she began again:
“Well, what was to be done? I hit Maxim on the forehead, and pulled Varia’s plait; but he said reasonably enough: ‘Quarreling won’t put things right.’ And she said : ‘Let us think what is the best thing to do first, and have a row afterwards.’
“‘Have you any money?’ I asked him.
“‘I had some,’ he replied, ‘but I bought Varia a ring with it.’
“‘How much did you have then?’
“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘about a hundred roubles.’
“Now at that time money was scarce and things were dear, and I looked at the two your mother and father and I said to myself: ‘What children! . . . What young. fools!’
“‘I hid the ring under the floor,’ said your mother, ‘so that you should not see it. We can sell it.’
“Such children they were both of them! However, we discussed the ways and means for them to be married in a week’s time, and I promised to arrange the matter with the priest. But I felt very uncomfortable myself, and my heart went pit-a-pat, because I was so frightened of grandfather; and Varia was frightened too, painfully so. Well, we arranged it all!
“But your father had an enemy a certain workman, an evil-minded man who had guessed what was going on long ago, and now watched our movements. Well, I arrayed my only daughter in the best things I could get, and took her out to the gate, where there was a troika waiting. She got into it, Maxim whistled, and away they drove. I was going back to the house, in tears, when I ran across this man, who said in a cringing tone:
“‘I have a good heart, and I shall not interfere with the workings of Fate; only, Akulina Ivanovna, you must give me fifty roubles for keeping quiet.’
“But I had no money; I did not like it, nor care to save it, and so I told him, like a fool:
“‘I have no money, so I can’t give you any.’
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘you can promise it to me.’
“‘How can I do that? Where am I to get it from after I have promised?’
“‘Is it so difficult to steal from a rich husband?’ he says.
“‘If I had not been a fool I should have temporized with him ; but I spat full in his ugly mug, and went into the house. And he rushed into the yard and raised a hue and cry.”
Closing her eyes, she said, smiling:
“Even now I have a lively remembrance of that daring deed of mine. Grandfather roared like a wild beast, and wanted to know if they were making fun of him. As it happened, he had been taking stock of Varia lately, and boasting about her: ‘I shall marry her to a nobleman a gentleman !’ Here was a pretty nobleman for him! here was a pretty gentleman! But the Holy Mother of God knows better than we do what persons ought to be drawn together.
“Grandfather tore about the yard as if he were on fire, calling Jaakov and Michael and even at the suggestion of that wicked workman Klima, the coachman too. I saw him take a leathern strap with a weight tied on the end of it, and Michael seized his gun. We had good horses then, full of spirit, and the carriage was light. ‘Ah well !’ I thought, ‘they are sure to overtake them.’ But here Varia’s Guardian Angel suggested something to me. I took a knife and cut the ropes belonging to the shafts. ‘There! they will break down on the road now.’ And so they did. The shafts came unfastened on the way, and nearly killed grandfather and Michael and Klima too, besides delaying them; and by the time they had repaired it, and dashed up to the church, Varia and Maxim were standing in the church porch married thank God!
“Then our people started a fight with Maxim; but he was in very good condition and he was rare and strong. He threw Michael away from the porch and broke his arm. Klima also was injured; and grandfather and Jaakov and that workman were all frightened!
“Even in his rage he did not lose his presence of mind, but he said to grandfather:
“‘You can throw away that strap. Don’t wave it about over me, for I am a man of peace, and what I have taken is only what God gave me, and no man shall take from me ... and that is all I have to say to you.’
“They gave it up then, and grandfather returned to the carriage crying:
“‘It is good-by now, Varvara ! You are no daughter of mine, and I never wish to see you again, either alive or dead of hunger.’
“When he came ‘home he beat me, and he scolded me; but all I did was to groan and hold my tongue.
“Everything passes away, and what is to be will be. After this he said to me :
“‘Now, look here, Akulina, you have no daughter now. Remember that.’
“But I only said to myself:
“‘Tell more lies, sandy-haired, spiteful man say that ice is warm !’ ’
I listened attentively, greedily. Some part of her story surprised me, for grandfather had given quite a different account of mother’s wedding; he said that he had been against the marriage and had forbidden mother to his house after it, but the wedding had not been secret, and he had been present in the church. I did not like to ask grandmother which of them spoke the truth, because her story was the more beautiful of the two, and I liked it best.
When she was telling a story she rocked from side to side all the time, just as if she were in a boat. If she was relating something sad or terrible, she rocked more violently, and stretched out her hands as if she were pushing away something in the air; she often covered her eyes, while a sightless, kind smile hid itself in her wrinkled cheek, but her thick eyebrows hardly moved. Sometimes this uncritical friendliness of hers to everybody touched my heart, and sometimes I wished that she would use strong language and assert herself more.
“At first, for two weeks, I did not know where
Varvara and Maxim were; then a little barefooted boy was sent to tell me. I went to see them on a Saturday I was supposed to be going to vespers, but I went to them instead. They lived a long way off, on the Suetinsk Slope, in the wing of a house overlooking a yard belonging to some works a dusty, dirty, noisy place; but they did not mind it they were like two cats, quite happy, purring, and even playing together. I took them what I could tea, sugar, cereals of various kinds, jam, flour, dried mushrooms, and a small sum of money which I had got from grandfather on the quiet. You are allowed to steal, you know, when it is not for yourself.
“But your father would not take anything. ‘What ! Are we beggars’?’ he says.
“And Varvara played the same tune. ‘Ach! . . . What is this for, Mamasha’?’
“I gave them a lecture. ‘You young fools !’ I said. ‘Who am I, I should like to know? ... I am the mother God gave you . . . and you, silly, are my own flesh and blood. Are you going to offend me ? Don’t you know that when you offend your mother on earth, the Mother of God in Heaven weeps bitterly?’
“Then Maxim seized me in his arms and carried me round the room ... he actually danced he was strong, the bear! And Varvara there, the hussy, was as proud as a peacock of her husband, and kept looking at him as if he were a new doll, and talked about house-keeping with such an air you would have thought she was an old hand at it ! It was comical to listen to her. And she gave us cheese-cakes for tea which would have broken the teeth of a wolf, and curds all sprinkled with dust.
“Things went on like this for a long time, and your birth was drawing near, but still grandfather never said a word he is obstinate, our old man ! I went to see them on the quiet, and he knew it; but he pretended not to. It was forbidden to any one in the house to speak of Varia, so she was never mentioned. I said nothing about her either, but I knew that a father’s heart could not be dumb for long. And at last the critical moment arrived. It was night; there was a snowstorm raging, and it sounded as if bears were throwing themselves against the window. The wind howled down the chimneys; all the devils were let loose. Grandfather and I were in bed but we could not sleep.
“‘It is bad for the poor on such a night as this,’ I remarked; ‘but it is worse for those whose minds are not at rest.’
“Then grandfather suddenly asked:
“‘How are they getting on? All right?’
“‘Who are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘About our daughter Varvara and our son-in-law Maxim?’
“‘How did you guess who I meant?’
“‘That will do, Father,’ I said. ‘Suppose you leave off playing the fool”? What pleasure is to be got out of it?
“He drew in his breath. ‘Ach, you devil !’ he said. ‘You gray devil !’
“Later on he said: ‘They say he is a great fool’ (he was speaking of your father). ‘Is it true that he is a fool?’
!’
“

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