منتديات منابر ثقافية - عرض مشاركة واحدة

10-28-2011, 06:18 PM

المشاركة 25

ريم بدر الدين

عضو مجلس الإدارة سابقا

اوسمتي

مجموع الاوسمة: 5

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But while matters were improving at school, an unpleasant incident occurred at home. I stole a rouble from mother. The crime had been committed without forethought. One evening mother went out and left me to keep house and mind the baby; feeling bored, I began to turn over the leaves of a book belonging to my stepfather “The Memoirs of a Doctor,” by Dumas Pere and between the pages I came across two notes, one for ten roubles and the other for one rouble. I could not understand the book, so I shut it up ; then it suddenly dawned upon me that if I had a rouble I could buy not only the Bible, but also the book about Robinson. That such a book existed I had learned at school not long before this. One frosty day in recreation time, I was telling the boys a fairy-story, when one of them observed in a tone of contempt :
“Fairy-tales are bosh! ‘Robinson’ is what I like. It is a true story.”
Finding several other boys who had read “Robinson” and were full of its praises, I felt offended at their not liking grandmother’s stories, and made up my mind to read “Robinson” for myself, so that I should be able to tell them it was “bosh !”
The next day I brought the Bible and two torn volumes of Andersen’s fairy-tales to school, together with three pounds of white bread and a pound of sausages. In the little dark shop by the wall of Vladinursk Church there had also been a “Robinson” a thin little book with a yellow cover, and a picture of a bearded man in a fur nightcap, with the skin of a wild beast over his shoulders, on the front page; but I did not like the look of it. Even the exterior of the fairy-tales was pleasing, in spite of their being torn.
In the long playtime I distributed the bread and sausages amongst the boys, and we began to read that wonderful story “The Nightingale,” which took all our hearts by storm.
“In China all the people are Chinese, and even the Emperor is a Chinaman” I remember how pleasantly this phrase struck me with its simple, joyful, smiling music. There were many other points about the story too which were wonderfully good.
But I was not to be allowed to read “The Nightingale” in school. There was not time enough, for when I returned home mother, who was standing before the fire holding a frying-pan in which she had been cooking some eggs, asked me in a strange, subdued voice :
“Did you take that rouble?’
“Yes, I took it out of that book there.”
She gave me a sound beating with the frying-pan, and took away Andersen’s book and hid it somewhere so that I could never find it again, which was a far worse punishment to me than the beating.
I did not go to school for several days, and during that time my stepfather must have told one of his friends about my exploit, who told his children, who carried the story to school, and when I went back I was met with the new cry “Thief!”
It was a brief and clear description, but it did not happen to be a true one, seeing that I had not attempted to conceal the fact that it was I who had taken the rouble. I tried to explain this, but they did not believe me; and when I went home I told mother that I was not going to school any more.
Sitting by the window, again pregnant, with a gray face and distraught, weary eyes, she was feeding my brother Sascha, and she stared at me with her mouth open, like a fish.
“You are wrong,” she said quietly. “No one could possibly know that you took the rouble.”
“Come yourself and ask them.”
“You must have chattered about it yourself. Confess now you told it yourself? Take care, for I shall find out for myself tomorrow who spread that story in school.”
I gave her the name of the pupil. Her face wrinkled pitifully and her tears began to fall.
I went away to the kitchen and lay down on my bed, which consisted of a box behind the stove. I lay there and listened to my mother wailing :
“My God! My God!”
Not being able to bear the disgusting smell of greasy cloths being dried any longer, I rose and went out to the yard ; but mother called after me :
“Where are you going to? Where are you going? Come here to me!”
Then we sat on the floor; and Sascha lay on mother’s knees, and taking hold of the buttons of her dress bobbed his head and said “boovooga,” which was his way of saying “poogorka” (button).
I sat pressed to mother’s side, and she said, kissing me:
“We . . . are poor, and every kopeck . . . every kopeck . . .”
But she never finished what she began to say, pressing me with her hot arm.
“What trash trash !” she exclaimed suddenly, using a word I had heard her use before.
Sascha repeated:
“T’ash!”
He was a queer little boy; clumsily formed, with a large head, he looked around on everything with his beautiful dark blue eyes, smiling quietly, exactly as if he were expecting some one. He began to talk unusually early, and lived in a perpetual state of quiet happiness. He was a weakly child, and could hardly crawl about; and he was always very pleased to see me, and used to ask to be taken up in my arms, and loved to crush my ears in his soft little fingers, which always, somehow, smelled of violets. He died unexpectedly, without having been ill at all ; in the morning he was quietly happy as usual, and in the evening, when the bells were ringing for vespers, he was laid out upon the table. This happened soon after the birth of the second child, Nikolai. Mother had done as she had promised, and matters were put right for me at school, but I was soon involved in another scrape.
One day, at the time of evening tea, I was coming into the kitchen from the yard when I heard a distressful cry from mother:
“Eugen, I beg you, I beg !”
“Non sense!” said my stepfather.
“But you are going to her I know it!”
“We 11?”
For some seconds they were both silent; then mother said, coughing:
“What vile trash you are !”
I heard him strike her, and rushing into the room I saw that mother, who had fallen on to her knees, was resting her back and elbows against a chair, with her chest forward and her head thrown back, with a rattling in her throat, and terribly glittering eyes ; while he, dressed in his best, with a new overcoat, was striking her in the chest with his long foot. I seized a knife from the table a knife with a bone handle set in silver, which they used to cut bread with, the only thing belonging to my father which remained to mother I seized it and struck with all my force at my step-father’s side.
By good luck mother was in time to push Maximov away, and the knife going sideways tore a wide hole in his overcoat, and only grazed his skin. My step-father, gasping, rushed from the room holding his side, and mother seized me and lifted me up; then with a groan threw me on the floor. My stepfather took me away from her when he returned from the yard.
Late that evening, when, in spite of everything, he had gone out, mother came to me behind the stove, gently took me in her arms, kissed me, and said, weeping :
“Forgive me; it was my fault! Oh, my dear! How could you? . . . And with a knife . . . ?”
I remember with perfect clearness how I said to her that I would kill my stepfather and myself too. And I think I should have done it; at any rate I should have made the attempt. Even now I can see that contemptible long leg, in braided trousers, flung out into the air, and kicking a woman’s breast. Many years later that unfortunate Maximov died before my eyes in a hospital. I had then become strangely attached to him, and I wept to see the light in his beautiful, roving eyes grow dim, and finally go out altogether; but even in that sad moment, although my heart was full of a great grief, I could not forget that he had kicked my mother.
As I remember these oppressive horrors of our wild Russian life, I ask myself often whether it is worth while to speak of them. And then, with restored confidence, I answer myself “It is worth while because it is actual, vile fact, which has not died out, even in these days a fact which must be traced to its origin, and pulled up by the root from the memories, the souls of the people, and from our narrow, sordid lives.”
And there is another and more important reason impelling me to describe these horrors. Although they are so disgusting, although they oppress us and crush many beautiful souls to death, yet the Russian is still so healthy and young in heart that he can and does rise above them. For in this amazing life of ours not only does the animal side of our nature flourish and grow fat, but with this animalism there has grown up, triumphant in spite of it, bright, healthful and creative a type of humanity which inspires us to look forward to our regeneration, to the time when we shall all live peacefully and humanely.

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