منتديات منابر ثقافية - عرض مشاركة واحدة

10-28-2011, 05:48 PM

المشاركة 11

ريم بدر الدين

عضو مجلس الإدارة سابقا

اوسمتي

مجموع الاوسمة: 5

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Grandfather used to see my bruises, but he never scolded me ; he only quackled, and roared :
“More decorations! While you are in my house, young warrior, don’t you dare to run about the streets; do you hear me?”
I was never attracted, by the street if it was quiet, but as soon as I heard the merry buzz of the children, I ran out of the yard, forgetting all about grandfather’s prohibition. Bruises and taunts did not hurt me, but the brutality of the street sports a brutality only too well known to me, wearying and oppressive, reducing one to a state of frenzy disturbed me tremendously. I could not contain myself when the children baited dogs and cocks, tortured cats, drove away the goats of the Jews, jeered at drunken vagabonds, and at happy “Igosha with death in his pocket.”
This was a tall, withered-looking, smoke-dried individual clad in a heavy sheepskin, with coarse hair on his fleshless, rusty face. He went about the streets, stooping, wavering strangely, and never speaking gazing fixedly all the time at the ground. His iron-hued face, with its small, sad eyes, inspired me with an uneasy respect for him. Here was a man, I thought, pre occupied with a weighty matter; he was looking for something, and it was wrong to hinder him.
The little boys used to run after him, slinging stones at his broad back; and after going on for some time as if he did not notice them, and as if he were not even conscious of the pain of the blows, he would stand still, throw up his head, push back his ragged cap with a spasmodic movement of his hands, and look about him as if he had but just awoke.
“Igosha with death in his pocket! Igosha, where are you going? Look out, Death in your pocket!” cried the boys.
He would thrust his hand in his pocket, then stooping quickly would pick up a stone or a lump of dry mud from the ground, and flourish his long arms as he muttered abuse, which was confined always to the same few filthy words. The boys’ vocabulary was immeasurably richer than his in this respect. Sometimes he hobbled after them, but his long sheepskin hindered him in running, and he would fall on his knees, resting his black hands on the ground, and looking just like the withered branch of a tree; while the children aimed stones at his sides and back, and the biggest of them ventured to run quite close to him and, jumping about him, scattered handfuls of dust over his head.
But the most painful spectacle which I beheld in the streets was that of our late foreman, Gregory Ivanovitch, who had become quite blind, and now went about begging; looking so tall and handsome, and never speaking. A little gray-haired old woman held him by the arm, and halting under the windows, to which she never raised her eyes, she wailed in a squeaky voice : “For Christ’s sake, pity the poor blind !” But Gregory Ivanovitch said never a word. His dark glasses looked straight into the walls of the houses, in at the windows, or into the faces of the passers-by; his broad beard gently brushed his stained hands; his lips were closely pressed together. I often saw him, but I never heard a sound proceed from that sealed mouth ; and the thought of that silent old man weighed upon me torturingly. I could not go to him I never went near him; on the contrary, as soon as I caught sight of him being led along, I used to run into the house and say to grandmother:
“Gregory is out there.”
“Is he?” she would exclaim in an uneasy, pitying tone. “Well, run back and give him this.”
But I would refuse curtly and angrily, and she would go to the gate herself and stand talking to him for a long time. He used to laugh, and pull his beard, but he said little, and that little in monosyllables. Sometimes grandmother brought him into the kitchen and gave him tea and something to eat, and every time she did so he inquired where I was. Grandmother called me, but I ran away and hid myself in the yard. I could not go to him. I was conscious of a feeling of intolerable shame in his presence, and I knew that grandmother was ashamed too. Only once we discussed Gregory between ourselves, and this was one day when, having led him to the gate, she came back through the yard, crying and hanging her head. I went to her and took her hand.
“Why do you run away from him?” she asked softly. “He is a good man, and very fond of you, you know.”
“Why doesn’t grandfather keep him?” I asked.
“Grandfather?” she halted, and then uttered in a very low voice those prophetic words: “Remember what I say to you now God will punish us grievously for this. He will punish us ”
And she was not wrong, for ten years later, when she had been laid to rest, grandfather was wandering through the streets of the town, himself a beggar, and out of his mind pitifully whining under the windows :
“Kind cooks, give me a little piece of pie just a little piece of pie. U gh, you!”
Besides Igosha and Gregory Ivanovitch, I was greatly concerned about the Voronka a woman of bad reputation, who was chased away from the streets. She used to appear on holidays an enormous, dishevelled, tipsy creature, walking with a peculiar gait, as if without moving her feet or touching the earth drifting along like a cloud, and bawling her ribald, songs. People in the street hid themselves as soon as they saw her, running into gateways, or corners, or shops ; she simply swept the street clean. Her face was almost blue, and blown out like a bladder; her large gray eyes were hideously and strangely wide open, and sometimes she groaned and cried :
“My little children, where are you?”
I asked grandmother who she was.
“There is no need for you to know,” she answered; nevertheless she told me briefly:
“This woman had a husband a civil-servant named Voronov, who wished to rise to a better position ; so he sold his wife to his Chief, who took her away somewhere, and she did not come home for two years. When she returned, both her children a boy and a girl were dead, and her husband was in prison for gambling with Government money. She took to drink, in her grief, and now goes about creating disturbances. No holiday passes without her being taken up by the police.”
Yes, home was certainly better than the street. The best time was after dinner, when grandfather went to Uncle Jaakov’s workshop, and grandmother sat by the window and told me interesting fairy-tales, and other stories, and spoke to me about my father.
The starling, which she had rescued from the cat, had had his broken wings clipped, and grandmother had skilfully made a wooden leg to replace the one which had been devoured. Then she taught him to talk. Sometimes she would stand for a whole hour in front of the cage, which hung from the window-frame, and, looking like a huge, good-natured animal, would repeat in her hoarse voice to the bird, whose. plumage was as black as coal :
“Now, my pretty starling, ask for something to eat.”
The starling would fix his small, lively, humorous eye upon her, and tap his wooden leg on the thin bottom of the cage; then he would stretch out his neck and whistle like a goldfinch, or imitate the mocking note of the cuckoo. He would try to mew like a cat, and howl like a dog; but the gift of human speech was denied to him.
“No nonsense now!” grandmother would say quite seriously. “Say ‘Give the starling something to eat.’ ”
The little black-feathered monkey having uttered a sound which might have been “babushka” (grandmother), the old woman would smile joyfully and feed him from her hand, as she said :
“I know you, you rogue ! You are a make-believe. There is nothing you can’t do you are clever enough for anything.”
And she certainly did succeed in teaching the starling; and before long he could ask for what he wanted clearly enough, and, prompted by grandmother, could drawl :
“Go oo ood mo o orning, my good woman!” At first his cage used to hang in grandfather’s room, but he was soon turned out and put up in the attic, because he learned to mock grandfather. He used to put his yellow, waxen bill through the bars of the cage while grandfather was saying his prayers loudly and clearly, and pipe :
“Thou! Thou! Thee! The ee! Thou!” Grandfather chose to take offense at this, and once he broke off his prayers and stamped his feet, crying furiously :
“Take that devil away, or I will kill him !” Much that was interesting and amusing went on in this house; but at times I was oppressed by an inexpressible sadness. My whole being seemed to be consumed by it; and for a long time I lived as in a dark pit, deprived of sight, hearing, feeling blind and half-dead.

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