by Maxim Gorky
This insult was more than I could bear, and I said: “I had a better life as a rag-picker than I have with you. You took me as a pupil, and what have you taught me? To empty the dish-water!”
He took me by the hair, but not roughly, and looked into my eyes, saying in a tone of astonishment:
“I see you are rebellious. That, my lad, won’t suit me. N-o-o.”
I thought that I should be sent away for this, but a few days later he came into the kitchen with a roll of thick paper, a pencil, a square, and a ruler in his hands.
“When you have finished cleaning the knives, draw this.”
On one sheet of paper was outlined the façade of a two-storied house, with many windows and absurd decorations.
“Here are compasses for you. Place dots on the paper where the ends of the lines come, and then draw from point to point with a ruler, lengthwise first—that will be horizontal—and then across—that will be vertical. Now get on with it.”
I was delighted to have some clean work to do, but I gazed at the paper and the instruments with reverent fear, for I understood nothing about them. However, after washing my hands, I sat down to learn. I drew all the horizontal lines on the sheet and compared them. They were quite good, although three seemed superfluous. I drew the vertical lines, and observed with astonishment that the face of the house was absurdly disfigured. The windows had crossed over to the partition wall, and one came out behind the wall and hung in mid-air. The front steps were raised in the air to the height of the second floor; a cornice appeared in the middle of the roof; and a dormer-window on the chimney.
For a long time, hardly able to restrain my tears, I gazed at those miracles of inaccuracy, trying to make out how they had occurred; and not being able to arrive at any conclusion, I decided to rectify the mistakes by the aid of fancy. I drew upon the façade of the house, upon the cornices, and the edge of the roof, crows, doves, and sparrows, and on the ground in front of the windows, people with crooked legs, under umbrellas which did not quite hide their deformities. Then I drew slanting lines across the whole, and took my work to my master.
He raised his eyebrows, ruffled his hair, and gruffly inquired:
“What is all this about?”
“That is rain coming down,” I explained. “When it rains, the house looks crooked, because the rain itself is always crooked. The birds—you see, these are all birds—are taking shelter. They always do that when it rains. And these people are running home. There—that is a lady who has fallen down, and that is a peddler with lemons to sell.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said my master, and bending over the table till his hair swept the paper, he burst out laughing as he cried:
“Och! you deserve to be torn up and thrown away yourself, you wild sparrow!”
The mistress came in, and having looked at my work, said to her husband:
“Beat him!”
But the master said peaceably:
“That’s all right; I myself did not begin any better.”
Obliterating the spoiled house with a red pencil, he gave me some paper.
“Try once more.”
The second copy came out better, except that a window appeared in place of the front door. But I did not like to think that the house was empty, so I filled it with all sorts of inmates. At the windows sat ladies with fans in their hands, and cavaliers with cigarettes. One of these, a non-smoker, was making a “long nose” at all the others. A cabman stood on the steps, and near him lay a dog.
“Why, you have been scribbling over it again!” the master exclaimed angrily.
I explained to him that a house without inhabitants was a dull place, but he only scolded me.
“To the devil with all this foolery! If you want to learn, learn! But this is rubbish!”
When at length I learned to make a copy of the façade which resembled the original he was pleased.
“There, you see what you can do! Now, if you choose, we shall soon get on,” and he gave me a lesson.
“Make a plan of this house, showing the arrangement of the rooms, the places of the doors and windows, and the rest. I shall not show you how. You must do it by yourself.”
I went to the kitchen and debated. How was I to do it? But at this point my studies in the art of drawing came to a standstill.
The old mistress came to me and said spitefully:
“So you want to draw?”
Seizing me by the hair, she bumped my head on the table so hard that my nose and lips were bruised. Then she darted upon and tore up the paper, swept the instruments from the table, and with her hands on her hips said triumphantly:
“That was more than I could stand. Is an outsider to do the work while his only brother, his own flesh and blood, goes elsewhere?”
The master came running in, his wife rushed after him, and a wild scene began. All three flew at one another, spitting and howling, and it ended in the women weeping, and the master saying to me:
“You will have to give up the idea for a time, and not learn. You can see for yourself what comes of it!”
I pitied him. He was so crushed, so defenseless, and quite deafened by the shrieks of the women. I had realized before that the old woman did not like my studying, for she used to hinder me purposely, so I always asked her before I sat down to my drawing:
“There is nothing for me to do?”
She would answer frowningly:
“When there is I will tell you,” and in a few minutes she would send me on some errand, or she would say: “How beautifully you cleaned the staircase to-day! The corners are full of dirt and dust. Go and sweep them!”
I would go and look, but there was never any dust. “Do you dare to argue with me?” she would cry. One day she upset kvass all over my drawings, and at another time she spilt oil from the image lamp over them. She played tricks on me like a young girl, with childish artfulness, and with childish ignorance trying to conceal her artfulness. Never before or since have I met a person who was so soon put into a temper and for such trivial reasons, nor any one so passionately fond of complaining about every one and everything. People, as a rule, are given to complaining, but she did it with a peculiar delight, as if she were singing a song.
Her love for her son was like an insanity. It amused me, but at the same time it frightened me by what I can only describe as its furious intensity. Sometimes, after her morning prayers, she would stand by the stove, with her elbows resting on the mantel-board, and would whisper hotly:
“My luck! My idol! My little drop of hot blood, like a jewel! Light as an angel! He sleeps. Sleep on, child! Clothe thy soul with happy dreams! Dream to thyself a bride, beautiful above all others, a princess and an heiress, the daughter of a merchant! As for your enemies, may they perish as soon as they are born! And your friends, may they live for a hundred years, and may the girls run after you like ducks after the drake!”
All this was inexpressibly ludicrous to me. Coarse, lazy Victor was like a woodpecker, with a woodpecker’s large, mottled nose, and the same stubborn and dull nature. Sometimes his mother’s whispers awoke him, and he muttered sleepily:
“Go to the devil, Mamasha! What do you mean by snorting right in my face? You make life unbearable.”
Sometimes she stole away humbly, laughing:
“Well, go to sleep! Go to sleep, saucy fellow!”
But sometimes her legs seemed to give way, her feet came down heavily on the edge of the stove, and she opened her mouth and panted loudly, as if her tongue were on fire, gurgling out caustic words.
“So-o? It’s your mother you are sending to the devil. Ach! you! My shame! Accursed heart-sore! The devil must have set himself in my heart to ruin you from birth!”
She uttered obscene words, words of the drunken streets. It was painful to listen to her. She slept little, fitfully jumping down from the stove sometim
es several times in the night, and coming over to the couch to wake me.
“What is it?”
“Be quiet!” she would whisper, crossing herself and looking at something in the darkness. “O Lord, Elias the prophet, great martyr Varvara, save me from sudden death!”
She lighted the candle with a trembling hand. Her round, nosy face was swollen tensely; her gray eyes, blinking alarmingly, gazed fixedly at the surroundings, which looked different in the twilight. The kitchen, which was large, but encumbered with cupboards and trunks, looked small by night. There the moonbeams lived quietly; the flame of the lamp burning before the icon quivered; the knives gleamed like icicles on the walls; on the floor the black frying-pans looked like faces without eyes.
The old woman would clamber down cautiously from the stove, as if she were stepping into the water from a river-bank, and, slithering along with her bare feet, went into the corner, where over the wash-stand hung a ewer that reminded me of a severed head. There was also a pitcher of water standing there. Choking and panting, she drank the water, and then looked out of the window through the pale-blue pattern of hoar-frost on the panes.
“Have mercy on me, O God! have mercy on me!” she prayed in a whisper. Then putting out the candle, she fell on her knees, and whispered in an aggrieved tone: “Who loves me, Lord? To whom am I necessary?”
Climbing back on the stove, and opening the little door of the chimney, she tried to feel if the flue-plate lay straight, soiling her hands with soot, and fell asleep at that precise moment, just as if she had been struck by an invisible hand. When I felt resentful toward her I used to think what a pity it was that she had not married grandfather. She would have led him a life!
She often made me very miserable, but there were days when her puffy face became sad, her eyes were suffused with tears, and she said very touchingly:
“Do you think that I have an easy time? I brought children into the world, reared them, set them on their feet, and for what? To live with them and be their general servant. Do you think that is sweet to me? My son has brought a strange woman and new blood into the family. Is it nice for me? Well?”
“No, it is not,” I said frankly.
“Aha! there you are, you see!” And she began to talk shamelessly about her daughter-in-law. “Once I went with her to the bath and saw her. Do you think she has anything to flatter herself about? Can she be called beautiful?”
She always spoke objectionably about the relations of husband and wife. At first her speeches aroused my disgust, but I soon accustomed myself to listen to them with attention and with great interest, feeling that there was something painfully true about them.
“Woman is strength; she deceived God Himself. That is so,” she hissed, striking her hand on the table. “Through Eve are we all condemned to hell. What do you think of that?”
On the subject of woman’s power she could talk endlessly, and it always seemed as if she were trying to frighten some one in these conversations. I particularly remembered that “Eve deceived God.”
Overlooking our yard was the wing of a large building, and of the eight flats comprised in it, four were occupied by officers, and the fifth by the regimental chaplain. The yard was always full of officers’ servants and orderlies, after whom ran laundresses, housemaids, and cooks. Dramas and romances were being carried on in all the kitchens, accompanied by tears, quarrels, and fights. The soldiers quarreled among themselves and with the landlord’s workmen; they used to beat the women.
The yard was a seething pot of what is called vice, immorality, the wild, untamable appetites of healthy lads. This life, which brought out all the cruel sensuality, the thoughtless tyranny, the obscene boastfulness of the conqueror, was criticized in every detail by my employers at dinner, tea, and supper. The old woman knew all the stories of the yard, and told them with gusto, rejoicing in the misfortunes of others. The younger woman listened to these tales in silence, smiling with her swollen lips. Victor used to burst out laughing, but the master would frown and say:
“That will do, Mamasha!”
“Good Lord! I mustn’t speak now, I suppose!” the story-teller complained; but Victor encouraged her.
“Go on, Mother! What is there to hinder you? We are all your own people, after all.”
I could never understand why one should talk shamelessly before one’s own people.
The elder son bore himself toward his mother with contemptuous pity, and avoided being alone with her, for if that happened, she would surely overwhelm him with complaints against his wife, and would never fail to ask him for money. He would hastily press into her hand a ruble or so or several pieces of small silver.
“It is not right, Mother; take the money. I do not grudge it to you, but it is unjust.”
“But I want it for beggars, for candles when I go to church.”
“Now, where will you find beggars there? You will end by spoiling Victor.”
“You don’t love your brother. It is a great sin on your part.”
He would go out, waving her away.
Victor’s manner to his mother was coarse and derisive. He was very greedy, and he was always hungry. On Sundays his mother used to bake custards, and she always hid a few of them in a vessel under the couch on which I slept. When Victor left the dinner-table he would get them out and grumble:
“Couldn’t you have saved a few more, you old’ fool?”
“Make haste and eat them before any one sees you.”
“I will tell how you steal cakes for me behind their backs.”
Once I took out the vessel and ate two custards, for which Victor nearly killed me. He disliked me as heartily as I disliked him. He used to jeer at me and make me clean his boots about three times a day, and when I slept in the loft, he used to push up the trapdoor and spit in the crevice, trying to aim at my head.
It may be that in imitation of his brother, who often said “wild fowl,” Victor also needed to use some catchwords, but his were all senseless and particularly absurd.
“Mamasha! Left wheel! where are my socks?”
And he used to follow me about with stupid questions.
“Alesha, answer me. Why do we write ‘sinenki’ and pronounce it ‘phiniki’? Why do we say ‘Kolokola’ and not ‘Okolokola’? Why do we say ‘K’derevou’ and not ‘gdye plachou’?”
I did not like the way any of them spoke, and having been educated in the beautiful tongue which grandmother and grandfather spoke, I could not understand at first how words that had no sort of connection came to be coupled together, such as “terribly funny,” “I am dying to eat,” “awfully happy.” It seemed to me that what was funny could not be terrible, that to be happy could not be awful, and that people did not die for something to eat.
“Can one say that?” I used to ask them; but they jeered at me:
“I say, what a teacher! Do you want your ears plucked?”
But to talk of “plucking” ears also appeared incorrect to me. One could “pluck” grass and flowers and nuts, but not ears. They tried to prove to me that ears could be plucked, but they did not convince me, and I said triumphantly:
“Anyhow, you have not plucked my ears.”
All around me I saw much cruel insolence, filthy shamelessness. It was far worse here than in the Kunavin streets, which were full of “houses of resort” and “street-walkers.” Beneath the filth and brutality in Kunavin there was a something which made itself felt, and which seemed to explain it all—a strenuous, half-starved existence and hard work. But here they were overfed and led easy lives, and the work went on its way without fuss or worry. A corrosive, fretting weariness brooded over all.
My life was hard enough, anyhow, but I felt it still harder when grandmother came to see me. She would appear from the black flight of steps, enter the kitchen, cross herself before the icon, and then bow low to her younger sister. That bow bent
me down like a heavy weight, and seemed to smother me.
“Ah, Akulina, is it you?” was my mistress’s cold and negligent greeting to grandmother.
I should not have recognized grandmother. Her lips modestly compressed, her face changed out of knowledge, she set herself quietly on a bench near the door, keeping silence like a guilty creature, except when she answered her sister softly and submissively. This was torture to me, and I used to say angrily: “What are you sitting there for?”
Winking at me kindly, she replied:
“You be quiet. You are not master here.”.
“He is always meddling in matters which do not concern him, however we beat him or scold him,” and the mistress was launched on her complaints.
She often asked her sister spitefully:
“Well, Akulina, so you are living like a beggar?”
“That is a misfortune.”
“It is no misfortune where there is no shame.”
“They say that Christ also lived on charity.”
“Blockheads say so, and heretics, and you, old fool, listen to them! Christ was no beggar, but the Son of God. He will come, it is said, in glory, to judge the quick and dead—and dead, mind you. You will not be able to hide yourself from Him, Matushka, although you may be burned to ashes. He is punishing you and Vassili now for your pride, and on my account, because I asked help from you when you were rich.”
“And I helped you as much as it was in my power to do,” answered grandmother, calmly, “and God will pay us back, you know.”
“It was little enough you did, little enough.”
Grandmother was bored and worried by her sister’s untiring tongue. I listened to her squeaky voice and wondered how grandmother could put up with it. In that moment I did not love her.
The young mistress came out of her room and nodded affably to grandmother.
“Come into the dining-room. It is all right; come along!”
The master would receive grandmother joyfully.
“Ah, Akulina, wisest of all, how are you? Is old man Kashirin still alive?”