منتديات منابر ثقافية - عرض مشاركة واحدة

10-28-2011, 05:45 PM

المشاركة 10

ريم بدر الدين

عضو مجلس الإدارة سابقا

اوسمتي

مجموع الاوسمة: 5

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Chapter VII

I WAS not long in grasping the fact that there was one God for grandfather and another for grandmother. The frequency with which this difference was brought to my notice made it impossible to ignore it.
Sometimes grandmother woke up in the morning and sat a long while on the bed combing her wonderful hair. Holding her head firmly, she would draw the comb with its jagged teeth through every thread of that black, silky mane, whispering the while, not to wake me:
“Bother you! The devil take you for sticking together like this !”
When she had thus taken all the tangles out, she quickly wove it into a thick plait, washed in a hurry, with many angry tossings of her head, and without washing away the signs of irritation from her large face, which was creased by sleep, she placed herself before the icon and began her real morning ablutions, by which her whole being was instantly refreshed.
She straightened her crooked back, and raising her head, gazed upon the round face of Our Lady of Kazan, and after crossing herself reverently, said in a loud, fierce whisper:
“Most Glorious Virgin! Take me under thy protection this day, dear Mother.”
Having made a deep obeisance, she straightened her back with difficulty, and then went on whispering ardently, and with deep feeling:
“Source of our Joy! Stainless Beauty! Apple tree in bloom !”
Every morning she seemed to find fresh words of praise; and for that reason I used to listen to her prayers with strained attention.
“Dear Heart, so pure, so heavenly! My Defense and my Refuge! Golden Sun! Mother of God! Guard me from temptation; grant that I may do no one harm, and may not be offended by what others do to me thoughtlessly.”
With her dark eyes smiling, and a general air of rejuvenation about her, she crossed herself again, with that slow and ponderous movement of her hand.
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, for Thy Mother’s sake!”
Her prayers were always non-liturgical, full of sincere praise, and very simple.
She did not pray long in the mornings because she had to get the samovar ready, for grandfather kept no servants, and if the tea was not made to the moment, he used to give her a long and furious scolding.
Sometimes he was up before her, and would come up to the attic. Finding her at prayer, he would stand for some minutes listening to her, contemptuously curling his thin, dark lips, and when he was drinking his tea, he would growl:
“How often have I taught you how to say your prayers, blockhead. But you are always mumbling some nonsense, you heretic! I can’t think why God puts up with you.”
“He understands,” grandmother would reply confidently, “what we don’t say to Him. He looks into everything.”
“You cursed dullard! U u ugh, you!” was all he said to this.
Her God was with her all day; she even spoke to the animals about Him. Evidently this God, with willing submission, made Himself subject to all creatures to men, dogs, bees, and even the grass of the field; and He was impartially kind and accessible to every one on earth.
Once the petted cat belonging to the innkeeper’s wife an artful, pretty, coaxing creature, smoke-colored with golden eyes caught a starling in the garden. Grandmother took away the nearly exhausted bird and punished the cat, crying:
“Have you no fear of God, you spiteful wretch?”
The wife of the innkeeper and the porter laughed at these words, but she said to them angrily:
“Do you think that animals don’t understand about God? All creatures understand about Him better than you do, you heartless things !”
When she harnessed Sharapa, who was growing fat and melancholy, she used to hold a conversation with him.
“Why do you look so miserable, toiler of God? Why? You are getting old, my dear, that’s what it is.” And the horse would sigh and toss his head.
And yet she did not utter the name of God as frequently as grandfather did. Her God was quite com prehensible to me, and I knew that I must not tell lies in His presence; I should be ashamed to do so. The thought of Him produced such an invincible feeling of shame, that I never lied to grandmother. It would be simply impossible to hide anything from this good God ; in fact, I had not even a wish to do so.
One day the innkeeper’s wife quarreled with grandfather and abused him, and also grandmother, who had taken no part in the quarrel; nevertheless she abused her bitterly, and even threw a carrot at her.
“You are a fool, my good woman,” said grandmother very quietly; but I felt the insult keenly, and resolved to be revenged on the spiteful creature.
For a long time I could not make up my mind as to the best way to punish this sandy-haired, fat woman, with two chins and no eyes to speak of. From my own experience of feuds between people living together, I knew that they avenged themselves on one another by cutting off the tails of their enemy’s cat, by chasing his dogs, by killing his cocks and hens, by creeping into his cellar in the night and pouring kerosene over the cabbages and cucumbers in the tubs, and letting the kvass run out of the barrels; but nothing of this kind appealed to me. I wanted something less crude, and more terrifying.
At last I had an idea. I lay in wait for the inn-keeper’s wife, and as soon as she went down to the cellar, I shut the trap door on her, fastened it, danced a jig on it, threw the key on to the roof, and rushed into the kitchen where grandmother was busy cooking. At first she could not understand why I was in such an ecstasy of joy, but when she had grasped the cause, she slapped me on that part of my anatomy provided for the purpose, dragged me out to the yard, and sent me up to the roof to find the key. I gave it to her with reluctance, astonished at her asking for it, and ran away to a corner of the yard, whence I could see how she set the captive free, and how they laughed together in a friendly way as they crossed the yard.
“I’ll pay you for this !” threatened the innkeeper’s wife, shaking her plump fist at me; but there was a good-natured smile on her eyeless face.
Grandmother dragged me back to the kitchen by the collar. “Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Because she threw a carrot at you.”
“That means that you did it for me? Very well! This is what I will do for you I will horsewhip you and put you amongst the mice under the oven. A nice sort of protector you are! ‘Look at a bubble and it will burst directly.’ If I were to tell grandfather he would skin you. Go up to the attic and learn your lesson.”
She would not speak to me for the rest of the day, but before she said her prayers that night she sat on the bed and uttered these memorable words in a very impressive tone:
“Now, Lenka, my darling, you must keep yourself from meddling with the doings of grown-up persons. Grown-up people are given responsibilities and they have to answer for them to God; but it is not so with you yet; you live by a child’s conscience. Wait till God takes possession of your heart, and shows you the work you are to do, and the way you are to take. Do you understand? It is no business of yours to decide who is to blame in any matter. God judges, and punishes; that is for Him, not for us.”
She was silent for a moment while she took a pinch of snuff; then, half-closing her right eye, she added:
“Why, God Himself does not always know where the fault lies.”
“Doesn’t God know everything?” I asked in astonishment.
“If He knew everything, a lot of things that are done would not be done. It is as if He, the Father, . looks and looks from Heaven at the earth, and sees how often we weep, how often we sob, and says: ‘My people, my dear people, how sorry I am for you !’ ”
She was crying herself as she spoke; and drying her wet cheeks, she went into the corner to pray.
From that time her God became still closer and still more comprehensible to me.
Grandfather, in teaching me, also said that God was a Being Omnipresent, Omniscient, All-seeing, the kind Helper of people in all their affairs ; but he did not pray like grandmother. In the morning, before going to stand before the icon, he took a long time washing himself; then, when he was fully dressed, he carefully combed his sandy hair, brushed his beard, and looking at himself in the mirror, saw that his shirt sat well, and tucked his black cravat into his waistcoat after which he advanced cautiously, almost stealthily, to the icon. He always stood on one particular board of the parquet floor, and with an expression in his eyes which made them look like the eyes of a horse, he stood in silence for a minute, with bowed head, and arms held straight down by his sides in soldier fashion; then, upright, and slender as a nail, he began impressively :
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
After these words it always seemed to me that the room became extraordinarily quiet; the very flies seemed to buzz cautiously.
There he stood, with his head thrown back, his eyebrows raised and bristling, his golden beard sticking out horizontally, and recited the prayers, in a firm tone, as if he were repeating a lesson, and with a voice which was very distinct and very imperious.
“It will be useless when the Judge comes, and every action is laid bare ”
Striking himself lightly on the breast, he prayed fervently:
“To Thee alone can sinners come. Oh, turn Thy face away from my misdeeds.”
He recited the “I believe,” using the prescribed words only; and all the while his right leg quivered, as if it were noiselessly keeping time with his prayers, and his whole form, straining towards the icon, seemed to become taller, leaner, and drier so clean he was, so neat, and so persistent in his demands.
“Heavenly Physician, heal my soul of its long-lived passions. To thee, Holy Virgin, I cry from my heart; to thee I offer myself with fervor.”
And with his green eyes full of tears he wailed loudly:
“Impute to me, my God, faith instead of works, and be not mindful of deeds which can by no means justify me!”
Here he crossed himself frequently at intervals, tossing his head as if he were about to butt at something, and his voice became squeaky and cracked. Later, when I happened to enter a synagogue, I realized that grandfather prayed like a Jew.
By this time the samovar would have been snorting on the table for some minutes, and a hot smell of rye-cakes would be floating through the room. Grandmother, frowning, strolled about, with her eyes on the floor; the sun looked cheerfully in at the window from the garden, the dew glistened like pearls on the trees, the morning air was deliciously perfumed by the smell of dill, and currant-bushes, and ripening apples, but grandfather went on with his prayers quavering and squeaking.
“Extinguish in me the flame of passion, for I am in misery and accursed.”
I knew all the morning prayers by heart, and even in my dreams I could say what was to come next, and
I followed with intense interest to hear if he made a mistake or missed out a word which very seldom happened; but when it did, it aroused a feeling of malicious glee in me.
When he had finished his prayers, grandfather used to say “Good morning!” to grandmother and me, and we returned his greeting and sat down to table. Then I used to say to him:
“You left out a word this morning.”
“Not really?” grandfather would say with an uneasy air of incredulity.
“Yes. You should have said, ‘This, my Faith, reigns supreme,’ but you did not say ‘reigns.’ ’
“There now!” he would exclaim, much perturbed, and blinking guiltily.
Afterwards he would take a cruel revenge on me for pointing out his mistake to him; but for the moment, seeing how disturbed he was, I was able to enjoy my triumph.
One day grandmother said to him jokingly:
“God must get tired of listening to your prayers, Father. You do nothing but insist on the same things over and over again.”
“What ‘s that?” he drawled in an ominous voice. “What are you nagging about now?”
“I say that you do not offer God so much as one little word from your own heart, so far as I can hear.”
He turned livid, and quivering with rage, jumped up on his chair and threw a dish at her head, yelping with a sound like that made by a saw on a piece of wood:
“Take that, you old hag!”
When he spoke of the omnipotence of God, he always emphasized its cruelty above every other attribute. “Man sinned, and the Flood was sent; sinned again, and his towns were destroyed by fire; then God punished people by famine and plague, and even now He is always holding a sword over the earth a scourge for sinners. All who have wilfully broken the commandments of God will be punished by sorrow and ruin.” And he emphasized this by rapping his fingers on the table.
It was hard for me to believe in the cruelty of God, and I suspected grandfather of having made it all up on purpose to inspire me with fear not of God but of himself; so I asked him frankly:
“Are you saying all this to make me obey you?”
And he replied with equal frankness:
“Well, perhaps I am. Do you mean to disobey me again?”
“And how about what grandmother says?”
“Don’t you believe the old fool!” he admonished me sternly. “From her youth she has always been stupid, illiterate, and unreasonable. I shall tell her she must not dare to talk to you again on such an important matter. Tell me, now how many companies of angels are there?”
I gave the required answer, and then I asked :
“Are they limited companies’?”
“Oh, you scatterbrain !” he laughed, covering his eyes and biting his lips. “What have companies to do with God . . . they belong to life on earth . . . they are founded to set the laws at naught.”
“What are laws?”
“Laws! Well, they are really derived from custom,” the old man explained, with pleased alacrity; and his intelligent, piercing eyes sparkled. “People living together agree amongst themselves ‘Such and such is our best course of action ; we will make a custom of it a rule’ ; finally it becomes a law. For example, before they begin a game, children will settle amongst themselves how it is to be played, and what rules are to be observed. Laws are made in the same way.”
“And what have companies to do with laws’?”
“Why, they are like an impudent fellow; they come along and make the laws of no account.”
“But why?”
“Ah! that you would not understand,” he replied, knitting his brows heavily ; but afterwards, as if in explanation, he said:
“All the actions of men help to work out God’s plans.
Men desire one thing, but He wills something quite different. Human institutions are never lasting. The Lord blows on them, and they fall into dust and ashes.”
I had reason for being interested in “companies,” so I went on inquisitively:
“But what does Uncle Jaakov mean when he sings:
“The Angels bright For God will fight, But Satan’s slaves Are companies”?
Grandfather raised his hand to his beard, thus hiding his mouth, and closed his eyes. His cheeks quivered, and I guessed that he was laughing inwardly.
“Jaakov ought to have his feet tied together and be thrown into the water,” he said. “There was no necessity for him to sing or for you to listen to that song. It is nothing but a silly joke which is current in Kalonga a piece of schismatical, heretical nonsense.” And looking, as it were, through and beyond me, he murmured thoughtfully: “U u ugh, you!”
But though he had set God over mankind, as a Being to be very greatly feared, none the less did he, like grandmother, invoke Him in all his doings.
The only saints grandmother knew were Nikolai, Yowry, Frola, and Lavra, who were full of kindness and sympathy with human-nature, and went about in the villages and towns sharing the life of the people, and regulating all their concerns; but grandfather’s saints were nearly all males, who cast down idols, or defied the Roman emperors, and were tortured, burned or flayed alive in consequence.
Sometimes grandfather would say musingly:
“If only God would help me to sell that little house, even at a small profit, I would make a public thanksgiving to St. Nicholas.”
But grandmother would say to me, laughingly:
“That’s just like the old fool! Does he think St. Nicholas will trouble himself about selling a house”? Hasn’t our little Father Nicholas something better to do?”
I kept by me for many years a church calendar which had belonged to grandfather, containing several inscriptions in his handwriting. Amongst others, opposite the day of Joachim and Anne, was written in red ink, and very upright characters :
“My benefactors, who averted a calamity.”
I remember that “calamity.”
In his anxiety about the maintenance of his very unprofitable children, grandfather set up as a money-lender, and used to receive articles in pledge secretly. Some one laid an information against him, and one night the police came to search the premises. There was a great fuss, but it ended well, and grandfather prayed till sunrise the next morning, and before breakfast, and in my presence, wrote those words in the calendar.
Before supper he used to read with me the Psalms, the breviary, or the heavy book of Ephraim Sirine ; but as soon as he had supped he began to pray again, and his melancholy words of contrition resounded in the stillness of evening :
“What can I offer to Thee, or how can I atone to Thee, O generous God, O King of Kings! . . . Preserve us from all evil imaginations. . . . O Lord, protect me from certain persons ! . . . My tears fall like rain, and the memory of my sins ...”
But very often grandmother said:
“Oie, I am dog-tired! I shall go to bed without saying my prayers.”
Grandfather used to take me to church to vespers on Saturday, and to High Mass on Sundays and festivals but even in church I made a distinction as to which God was being addressed ; whatever the priest or the deacon recited that was to grandfather’s God ; but the choir always sang to grandmother’s God. Of course I can only crudely express this childish distinction which I made between these two Gods, but I remember how it seemed to tear my heart with terrific violence, and how grandfather’s God aroused in my mind a feeling of terror and unpleasantness. A Being Who loved no one, He followed all of us about with i6o
His severe eyes, seeking and finding all that was ugly, evil, and sinful in us. Evidently He put no trust in man, He was always insisting on penance, and He loved to chastise.
In those days my thoughts and feelings about God were the chief nourishment of my soul and were the most beautiful ones of my existence. All other impressions which I received did nothing but disgust me by their cruelty and squalor, and awaken in me a sense of repugnance and ferocity. God was the best and brightest of all the beings who lived about me grandmother’s God, that Dear Friend of all creation; and naturally I could not help being disturbed by the question “How is it that grandfather cannot see the Good God?”
I was not allowed to run about the streets because it made me too excited. I became, as it were, intoxicated by the impressions which I received, and there was almost always a violent scene afterwards.
I had no comrades. The neighbors’ children treated me as an enemy. I objected to their calling me “the Kashmirin boy,” and seeing that they did it all the more, calling out to each other as soon as they saw me : “Look, here comes that brat, Kashmirin’s grandson. Go for him!” then the fight would begin. I was strong for my age and active with my fists, and my enemies, knowing this, always fell upon me in a crowd ; and as a rule the street vanquished me, and I returned home with a cut across my nose, gashed lips, and bruises all over my face all in rags and smothered in dust.
“What now?” grandmother exclaimed as she met me, with a mixture of alarm and pity; “so you ‘ve been fighting again, you young rascal ? What do you mean by it?’
She washed my face, and applied to my bruises copper coins or fomentations of lead, saying as she did so :
“Now, what do you mean by all this fighting”? You are as quiet as anything at home, but out of doors you are like I don’t know what. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I shall tell grandfather not to let you go out.”

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