منتديات منابر ثقافية - عرض مشاركة واحدة

10-28-2011, 05:42 PM

المشاركة 9

ريم بدر الدين

عضو مجلس الإدارة سابقا

اوسمتي

مجموع الاوسمة: 5

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He never told fictitious stories, but always related events which had really happened; and I also noticed that he hated to be questioned, which prompted me to ask persistently :
“Who are the best the French or the Russians?”
“How can I tell? I never saw a Frenchman at home,” he growled angrily. “A Pole cat is all right in its own hole,” he added.
“But are the Russians good?”
“In many respects they are, but they were better when the landlords ruled. We are all at sixes and sevens now; people can’t even get a living. The gentlefolk, of course, are to blame, because they have more intelligence to back them up; but that can’t be said of all of them, but only of a few good ones who have already been proved. As for the others most of them are as foolish as mice; they will take anything you like to give them. We have plenty of nut shells amongst us, but the kernels are missing; only nut shells, the kernels have been devoured. There ‘s a lesson for you, man ! We ought to have learned it, our wits ought to have been sharpened by now; but we are not keen enough yet.”
“Are Russians stronger than other people?” “We have some very strong people amongst us ; but it is not strength which is so important, but dexterity. As far as sheer strength goes, the horse is our superior.”
“But why did the French make war on us?”
“Well, war is the Emperor’s affair. We can’t expect to understand about it.”
But to my question: “What sort of a man was Bonaparte?” grandfather replied in a tone of retrospection :
“He was a wicked man. He wanted to make war on the whole world, and after that he wanted to make us all equal without rulers, or masters; every one to be equal, without distinction of class, under the same rules, professing the same religion, so that the only difference between one person and another would be their names. It was all nonsense, of course. Lobsters are the only creatures which cannot be distinguished one from the other . . . but fish are divided into classes. The sturgeon will not associate with the sheat-fish, and the sterlet refuses to make a friend of the herring. There have been Bonapartes amongst us ; there was Razin (Stepan Timotheev), and Pygatch (Emilian Ivanov) but I will tell you about them another time.”
Sometimes he would remain silent for a long time, gazing at me with rolling eyes, as if he had never seen me before, which was not at all pleasant. But he never spoke to me of my father or my mother. Now and again grandmother would enter noiselessly during these conversations, and taking a seat in the corner, would remain there for a long time silent and invisible. Then she would ask suddenly in her caressing voice :
“Do you remember, Father, how lovely it was when we went on a pilgrimage to Mouron? What year would that be now?”
After pondering, grandfather would answer carefully:
“I can’t say exactly, but it was before the cholera. It was the year we caught those escaped convicts in the woods.”
“True, true! We were still frightened of them”
“That’s right!”
I asked what escaped convicts were, and why they were running about the woods; and grandfather rather reluctantly explained.
“They are simply men who have run away from prison from the work they have been set to do.”
“How did you catch them?”
“How did we catch them? Why, like little boys play hide-and-seek some run away and the others look for them and catch them. When they were caught they were thrashed, their nostrils were slit, and they were branded on the forehead as a sign that they were convicts.”
“But why?”
“Ah! that is the question and one I can’t answer.
As to which is in the wrong the one who runs away or the one who pursues him that also is a mystery !”
“And do you remember, Father,” said grandmother, “after the great fire, how we ?”
Grandfather, who put accuracy before everything else, asked grimly:
“What great fire?”
When they went over the past like this, they forgot all about me. Their voices and their words mingled so softly and so harmoniously, that it sounded sometimes as if they were singing melancholy songs about illnesses and fires, about massacred people and sudden deaths, about clever rogues, and religious maniacs, and harsh landlords.
“What a lot we have lived through! What a lot we have seen !” murmured grandfather softly.
“We haven’t had such a bad life, have we?” said grandmother. “Do you remember how well the spring began, after Varia was born?”
“That was in the year ‘48, during the Hungarian Campaign ; and the day after the christening they drove out her godfather, Tikhon ”
“And he disappeared,” sighed grandmother.
“Yes; and from that time God’s blessings have seemed to flow off our house like water off a duck’s back. Take Varvara, for instance ”
“Now, Father, that will do!”
“What do you mean That will do’?’ he asked, scowling at her angrily. “Our children have turned out badly, whichever way you look at them. What has become of the vigor of our youth? We thought we were storing it up for ourselves in our children, as one might pack something away carefully in a basket ; when, lo and behold, God changes it in our hands into a riddle without an answer!”
He ran about the room, uttering cries as if he had burned himself, and groaning as if he were ill; then turning on grandmother he began to abuse his children, shaking his small, withered fist at her threateningly as he cried:
“And it is all your fault for giving in to them, and for taking their part, you old hag !”
His grief and excitement culminated in a tearful howl as he threw himself on the floor before the icon, and beating his withered, hollow breast with all his force, cried:
“Lord, have I sinned more than others’? Why then?”
And he trembled from head to foot, and his eyes, wet with tears, glittered with resentment and animosity.
Grandmother, without speaking, crossed herself as she sat in her dark corner, and then, approaching him cautiously, said:
“Now, why are you fretting like this? God knows what He is doing. You say that other people’s children are better than ours, but I assure you, Father, that you will find the same thing everywhere quarrels, and bickerings, and disturbances. All parents wash away their sins with their tears; you are not the only one.”
Sometimes these words would pacify him, and he would begin to get ready for bed; then grandmother and I would steal away to our attic.
But once when she approached him with soothing speech, he turned on her swiftly, and with all his force dealt her a blow in the face with his fist.
Grandmother reeled, and almost lost her balance, but she managed to steady herself, and putting her hand to her lips, said quietly: “Fool!” And she spit blood at his feet ; but he only gave two prolonged howls and raised both hands to her.
“Go away, or I will kill you !”
“Fool!” she repeated as she was leaving the room.
Grandfather rushed at her, but, with haste, she stepped over the threshold and banged the door in his face.
“Old hag!” hissed grandfather, whose face had become livid, as he clung to the door-post, clawing it viciously.
I was sitting on the couch, more dead than alive, hardly able to believe my eyes. This was the first time he had struck grandmother in my presence, and I was overwhelmed with disgust at this new aspect of his character at this revelation of a trait which I found unforgivable, and I felt as if I were being suffocated. He stayed where he was, hanging on to the door-post, his face becoming gray and shriveled up as if it were covered with ashes.
Suddenly he moved to the middle of the room, knelt down, and bent forward, resting his hands on the floor; but he straightened himself almost directly, and beat his breast.
“And now, O Lord!”
I slipped off the warm tiles of the stove-couch, and crept out of the room, as carefully as if I were treading on ice. I found grandmother upstairs, walking up and down the room, and rinsing her mouth at intervals.
“Are you hurt?”
She went into the corner, spit out some water into the hand-basin, and replied coolly:
“Nothing to make a fuss about. My teeth are all right; it is only my lips that are bruised.”
“Why did he do it?’
Glancing out of the window she said :
“He gets into a temper. It is hard for him in his old age. Everything seems to turn out badly. Now you go to bed, say your prayers, and don’t think any more about this.”
I began to ask some more questions; but with a severity quite unusual in her, she cried:
“What did I say to you? Go to bed at once! I never heard of such disobedience !”
She sat at the window, sucking her lip and spitting frequently into her handkerchief, and I undressed, looking at her. I could see the stars shining above her black head through the blue, square window. In the street all was quiet, and the room was in darkness. When I was in bed she came over to me and softly stroking my head, she said :
“Sleep well! I shall go down to him. Don’t be anxious about me, sweetheart. It was my own fault, you know. Now go to sleep !”
She kissed me and went away; but an overwhelming sadness swept over me. I jumped out of the wide, soft, warm bed, and going to the window, gazed down upon the empty street, petrified by grief.

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