I went out into the world as "shop-boy" at a fashionable boot-shop in
the main street of the town. My master was a small, round man. He had a
brown, rugged face, green teeth, and watery, mud-colored eyes. At first
I thought he was blind, and to see if my supposition was correct, I
made a grimace.
"Don't pull your face about!" he said to me gently, but sternly. The
thought that those dull eyes could see me was unpleasant, and I did not
want to believe that this was the case. Was it not more than probable
that he had guessed I was making grimaces?
"I told you not to pull your face about," he said again, hardly moving
his thick lips.
"Don't scratch your hands," his dry whisper came to me, as it were,
stealthily. "You are serving in a first-class shop in the main street
of the town, and you must not forget it. The door-boy ought to stand
like a statue."
I did not know what a statue was, and I could n't help scratching my
hands, which were covered with red pimples and sores, for they had been
simply devoured by vermin.
"What did you do for a living when you were at home?" asked my master,
looking at my hands.
I told him, and he shook his round head, which was closely covered with
gray hair, and said in a shocked voice:
"Rag-picking! Why, that is worse than begging or stealing!"
I informed him, not without pride:
"But I stole as well."
At this he laid his hands on his desk, looking just like a cat with her
paws up, and fixed his eyes on my face with a terrified expression as
he whispered:
"Wha--a--t? How did you steal?"
I explained how and what I had stolen.
"Well, well, I look upon that as nothing but a prank. But if you rob me
of boots or money, I will have you put in prison, and kept there for
the rest of your life."
He said this quite calmly, and I was frightened, and did not like him
any more.
Besides the master, there were serving in the shop my cousin, Sascha
Jaakov, and the senior assistant, a competent, unctuous person with a
red face. Sascha now wore a brown frock-coat, a false shirt-front, a
cravat, and long trousers, and was too proud to take any notice of me.
When grandfather had brought me to my master, he had asked Sascha to
help me and to teach me. Sascha had frowned with an air of importance
as he said warning:
"He will have to do what I tell him, then."
Laying his hand on my head, grandfather had forced me to bend my neck.
"You are to obey him; he is older than you both in years and
experience."
And Sascha said to me, with a nod:
"Don't forget what grandfather has said." He lost no time in profiting
by his seniority.
"Kashirin, don't look so goggle-eyed," his master would advise him.
"I--I'm all right," Sascha would mutter, putting his head down. But the
master would not leave him alone.
"Don't butt; the customers will think you are a goat."
The assistant smiled respectfully, the master stretched his lips in
a hideous grin, and Sascha, his face flushing, retreated behind the
counter. I did not like the tone of these conversations. Many of the
words they used were unintelligible to me, and sometimes they seemed to
be speaking in a strange language. When a lady customer came in, the
master would take his hands out of his pockets, tug at his mustache,
and fix a sweet smile upon his face--a smile which wrinkled his cheeks,
but did not change the expression of his dull eyes. The assistant
would draw himself up, with his elbows pressed closely against his
sides, and his wrists respectfully dangling. Sascha would blink shyly,
trying to hide his protruding eyes, while I would stand at the door,
surreptitiously scratching my hands, and observing the ceremonial of
selling.
Kneeling before the customer, the assistant would try on shoes with
wonderfully deft fingers. He touched the foot of the woman so carefully
that his hands trembled, as if he were afraid of breaking her leg.
But the leg was stout enough. It looked like a bottle with sloping
shoulders, turned neck downward.
One of these ladies pulled her foot away one day, shrieking:
"Oh, you are tickling me!"
"That is--because--you are so sensitive," the assistant explained
hastily, with warmth.
It was comical to watch him fawning upon the customers, and I had
to turn and look through the glass of the door to keep myself from
laughing. But something used to draw me back to watch the sale. The
proceedings of the assistant were very interesting, and while I looked
at him I was thinking that I should never be able to make my fingers
move so delicately, or so deftly put boots on other people's feet.
It often happened that the master went away from the shop into a little
room behind it, and he would call Sascha to him, leaving the assistant
alone with the customer. Once, lingering over the foot of a red-haired
woman, he took it between his fingers and kissed it.
"Oh," breathed the woman, "what a bold man you are!"
He puffed out his cheeks and emitted a long-drawn-out sound:
"O--o--h!"
At this I laughed so much that, to keep my feet, I had to hang on to
the handle of the door. It flew open, and my head knocked against one
of the panes of glass and broke it. The assistant stamped his foot at
me, my master hit me on the head with his heavy gold ring, and Sascha
tried to pull my ears. In the evening, when we were on our way home, he
said to me, sternly:
"You will lose your place for doing things like that. I 'd like to
know where the joke comes in." And then he explained: "If ladies take
a fancy to the assistant, it is good for trade. A lady may not be in
need of boots, but she comes in and buys what she does not want just
to have a look at the assistant, who pleases her. But you--you can't
understand! One puts oneself out for you, and--"
This incensed me. No one put himself out for me, and he least of all.
In the morning the cook, a sickly, disagreeable woman, used to call
me before him. I had to clean the boots and brush the clothes of the
master, the assistant, and Sascha, get the samovar ready, bring in wood
for all the stoves, and wash up. When I got to the shop I had to sweep
the floor, dust, get the tea ready, carry goods to the customers, and
go home to fetch the dinner, my duty at the door being taken in the
meantime by Sascha, who, finding it lowering to his dignity, rated me.
"Lazy young wretch! I have to do all your work for you."
This was a wearisome, dull life for me. I was accustomed to live
independently in the sandy streets of Kunavin, on the banks of the
turbid Oka, in the fields or woods, from morning to night. I was parted
from grandmother and from my comrades. I had no one to speak to, and
life was showing me her seamy, false side. There were occasions on
which a customer went away without making a purchase, when all three
would feel themselves affronted. The master would put his sweet smile
away in his pocket as he said:
"Kashirin, put these things away." Then he would grumble:
"There's a pig of a woman The fool found it dull sitting at home, so
she must come and turn our shop upside down! If you were my wife, I'd
give you something!"
His wife, a dried-up woman with black eyes and a large nose, simply
made a door-mat of him. She used to scold him as if he were a servant.
Often, after he had shown out a frequent customer with polite bows
and pleasant words, they would all begin to talk about her in a vile
and shameless manner, arousing in me a desire to run into the street
after her and tell her what they said. I knew, of course, that people
generally speak evil of one another behind one another's backs, but
these spoke of every one in a particularly revolting manner, as if they
were in the front rank of good people and had been appointed to judge
the rest of the world. Envious of many of them, they were never known
to praise any one, and knew something bad about everybody.
One day there came to the shop a young woman with bright, rosy cheeks
and sparkling eyes, attired in a velvet cloak with a collar of black
fur. Her face rose out of the fur like a wonderful flower. When she
had thrown the cloak off her shoulders and handed it to Sascha, she
looked still more beautiful. Her fine figure was fitted tightly with a
blue-gray silk robe; diamonds sparkled in her ears. She reminded me of
"Vassilissa the Beautiful," and I could have believed that she was in
truth the governor's wife. They received her with particular respect,
bending before her as if she were a bright light, and almost choking
themselves in their hurry to get out polite words. All three rushed
about the shop like wild things: their reflections bobbed up and down
in the glass of the cupboard. But when she left, after having bought
some expensive boots in a great hurry, the master, smacking his lips,
whistled and said:
"Hussy!"
"An actress--that sums her up," said the assistant, contemptuously.
They began to talk of the lovers of the lady and the luxury in which
she lived.
After dinner the master went to sleep in the room behind the shop, and
I, opening his gold watch, poured vinegar into the works. It was a
moment of supreme joy to me when he awoke and came into the shop, with
his watch in his hand, muttering wildly:
"What can have happened? My watch is all wet. I never remember such a
thing happening before. It is all wet; it will be ruined."
In addition to the burden of my duties in the shop and the housework, I
was weighed down by depression. I often thought it would be a good idea
to behave so badly that I should get my dismissal. Snow-covered people
passed the door of the shop without making a sound. They looked as if
on their way to somebody's funeral. Having meant to accompany the body
to the grave, they had been delayed, and, being late for the funeral
procession, were hurrying to the grave-side. The horses quivered with
the effort of making their way through the snow-drifts. From the belfry
of the church behind the shop the bells rang out with a melancholy
sound every day. It was Lent, and every stroke of the bell fell upon
my brain as if it had been a pillow, not hurting, but stupefying and
deafening, me. One day when I was in the yard unpacking a case of new
goods just received, at the door of the shop, the watchman of the
church, a crooked old man, as soft as if he were made of rags and as
ragged as if he had been torn to pieces by dogs, approached me.
"Are you going to be kind and steal some goloshes for me?" he asked.
I was silent. He sat down on an empty case, yawned, made the sign of
the cross over his mouth, and repeated:
"Will you steal them for me?"
"It is wrong to steal," I informed him.
"But people steal all the same. Old age must have its compensations."
He was pleasantly different from the people among whom I lived. I felt
that he had a firm belief in my readiness to steal, and I agreed to
hand him the goloshes through the window.
"That's right," he said calmly, without enthusiasm. "You are not
deceiving me? No, I see that you are not."
He was silent for a moment, trampling the dirty, wet snow with the
soles of his boots. Then he lit a long pipe, and suddenly startled me.
"But suppose it is I who deceive you? Suppose I take the goloshes to
your master, and tell him that you have sold them to me for half a
ruble? What then? Their price is two rubles, and you have sold them for
half a ruble. As a present, eh?"
I gazed at him dumbly, as if he had already done what he said he would
do; but he went on talking gently through his nose, looking at his
boots, and blowing out blue smoke.
"Suppose, for example, that your master has said to me, 'Go and try
that youngster, and see if he is a thief? What then?"
"I shall not give you the goloshes," I said, angry and frightened.
"You must give them now that you have promised."
He took me by the arm and drew me to him, and, tapping my forehead with
his cold fingers, drawled:
"What are you thinking of, with your 'take this' and 'take that'?"
"You asked me for them yourself."
"I might ask you to do lots of things. I might ask you to come and rob
the church. Would you do it? Do you think you can trust everybody? Ah,
you young fool!" He pushed me away from him and stood up.
"I don't want stolen goloshes. I am not a gentleman, and I don't wear
goloshes. I was only making fun of you. For your simplicity, when
Easter comes, I will let you come up into the belfry and ring the bells
and look at the town."
"I know the town."
"It looks better from the belfry."
Dragging his broken boots in the snow, he went slowly round the corner
of the church, and I looked after him, wondering dejectedly and
fearfully whether the old man had really been making fun of me, or had
been sent by my master to try me. I did not want to go back to the shop.
Sascha came hurriedly into the yard and shouted: "What the devil has
become of you?"
I shook my pincers at him in a sudden access of rage. I knew that both
he and the assistant robbed the master. They would hide a pair of boots
or slippers in the stovepipe, and when they left the shop, would slip
them into the sleeves of their overcoats. I did not like this, and felt
alarmed about it, for I remembered the threats of the master.
"Are you stealing?" I had asked Sascha.
"Not I, but the assistant," he would explain crossly. "I am only
helping him. He says, 'Do as I tell you,' and I have to obey. If I did
not, he would do me some mischief. As for master, he was an assistant
himself once, and he understands. But you hold your tongue."
As he spoke, he looked in the glass and set his tie straight with
just such a movement of his naturally spreading fingers as the senior
assistant employed. He was unwearying in his demonstrations of his
seniority and power over me, scolding me in a bass voice, and ordering
me about with threatening gestures. I was taller than he, but bony and
clumsy, while he was compact, flexible, and fleshy. In his frock-coat
and long trousers he seemed an important and substantial figure in my
eyes, and yet there was something ludicrous and unpleasing about him.
He hated the cook, a curious woman, of whom it was impossible to decide
whether she was good or bad.
"What I love most in the world is a fight," she said, opening wide
her burning black eyes. "I don't care what sort of fight it is,
cock-fights, dog-fights, or fights between men. It is all the same to
me."
And if she saw cocks or pigeons fighting in the yard, she would throw
aside her work and watch the fight to the end, standing dumb and
motionless at the window. In the evenings she would say to me and
Sascha:
"Why do you sit there doing nothing, children? You had far better be
fighting."
This used to make Sascha angry.
"I am not a child, you fool; I am junior assistant."
"That does not concern me. In my eyes, while you remain unmarried, you
are a child."
"Fool! Blockhead!"
"The devil is clever, but God does not love him."
Her talk was a special source of irritation to Sascha, and he used to
tease her; but she would look at him contemptuously, askance, and say:
"Ugh, you beetle! One of God's mistakes!"
Sometimes he would tell me to rub blacking or soot on her face when she
was asleep, stick pins into her pillow, or play other practical jokes
on her; but I was afraid of her. Besides, she slept very lightly and
used to wake up frequently. Lighting the lamp, she would sit on the
side of her bed, gazing fixedly at something in the corner. Sometimes
she came over to me, where I slept behind the stove, and woke me up,
saying hoarsely:
"I can't sleep, Leksyeka. I am not very well. Talk to me a little."
Half asleep, I used to tell her some story, and she would sit without
speaking, swaying from side to side. I had an idea that her hot body
smelt of wax and incense, and that she would soon die. Every moment I
expected to see her fall face downward on the floor and die. In terror
I would begin to speak loudly, but she would check me.
"'S-sh! You will wake the whole place up, and they will think that you
are my lover."
She always sat near me in the same attitude, doubled up, with her
wrists between her knees, squeezing them against the sharp bones of her
legs. She had no chest, and even through the thick linen night-dress
her ribs were visible, just like the ribs of a broken cask. After
sitting a long time in silence, she would suddenly whisper:
"What if I do die, it is a calamity which happens to all." Or she would
ask some invisible person, "Well, I have lived my life, have n't I?"
"Sleep!" she would say, cutting me short in the middle of a word, and,
straightening herself, would creep noiselessly across the dark kitchen.
"Witch!" Sascha used to call her behind her back.
I put the question to him:
"Why don't you call her that to her face?"
"Do you think that I am afraid to?" But a second later he said, with a
frown: "No, I can't say it to her face. She may really be a witch."
Treating every one with the same scornful lack of consideration, she
showed no indulgence to me, but would drag me out of bed at six
o'clock every morning, crying:
"Are you going to sleep forever? Bring the wood in! Get the samovar
ready! Clean the doorplate!"
Sascha would wake up and complain:
"What are you bawling like that for? I will tell the master. You don't
give any one a chance to, sleep."
Moving quickly about the kitchen with her lean, withered body, she
would flash her blazing, sleepless eyes upon him.
"Oh, it's you, God's mistake? If you were my son, I would give you
something!"
Sascha would abuse her, calling her "accursed one," and when we were
going to the shop he said to me: "We shall have to do something to get
her sent away. We 'll put salt in everything when she's not looking.
If everything is cooked with too much salt, they will get rid of her.
Or paraffin would do. What are you gaping about?"
"Why don't you do it yourself?"
He snorted angrily:
"Coward!"
The cook died under our very eyes. She bent down to pick up the
samovar, and suddenly sank to the floor without uttering a word, just
as if some one had given her a blow on the chest. She moved over on her
side, stretched out her arms, and blood trickled from her mouth.
We both understood in a flash that she was dead, but, stupefied by
terror, we gazed at her a long time without strength to say a word. At
last Sascha rushed headlong out of the kitchen, and I, not knowing what
to do, pressed close to the window in the light. The master came in,
fussily squatted down beside her, and touched her face with his finger.
"She is dead; that's certain," he said. "What can have caused it?" He
went into the corner where hung a small image of Nikolai Chudovortz
and crossed himself; and when he had prayed he went to the door and
commanded:
"Kashirin, run quickly and fetch the police!"
The police came, stamped about, received money for drinks, and went.
They returned later, accompanied by a man with a cart, lifted the cook
by the legs and the head, and carried her into the street. The mistress
stood in the doorway and watched them. Then she said to me:
"Wash the floor!"
And the master said:
"It is a good thing that she died in the evening."
I could not understand why it was a good thing. When we went to bed
Sascha said to me with unusual gentleness:
"Don't put out the lamp!"
"Are you afraid?"
He covered his head with the blanket, and lay silent a long time. The
night was very quiet, as if it were listening for something, waiting
for something. It seemed to me that the next minute a bell rang out,
and suddenly the whole town was running and shouting in a great
terrified uproar.
Sascha put his nose out of the blanket and suggested softly:
"Let's go and lie on the stove together."
"It is hot there."
After a silence he said:
"How suddenly she went off, did n't she? I am sure she was a witch. I
can't get to sleep."
"Nor I, either."
He began to tell tales about dead people--how they came out of their
graves and wandered till midnight about the town, seeking the place
where they had lived and looking for their relations.
"Dead people can only remember the town," he said softly; "but they
forget the streets and houses at once."
It became quieter and quieter and seemed to be getting darker. Sascha
raised his head and asked:
"Would you like to see what I have got in my trunk?"
I had long wanted to know what he hid in his trunk. He kept it locked
with a padlock, and always opened it with peculiar caution. If I tried
to peep he would ask harshly:
"What do you want, eh?"
When I agreed, he sat up in bed without putting his feet to the floor,
and ordered me in a tone of authority to bring the trunk to the
bed, and place it at his feet. The key hung round his neck with his
baptismal cross. Glancing round at the dark corners of the kitchen, he
frowned importantly, unfastened the lock, blew on the lid of the trunk
as if it had been hot, and at length, raising it, took out several
linen garments.
The trunk was half-full of chemist's boxes, packets of variously
colored tea-paper, and tins which had contained blacking or sardines.
"What is it?"
"You shall see."
He put a foot on each side of the trunk and bent over it, singing
softly:
"Czaru nebesnui----"
I expected to see toys. I had never possessed any myself, and pretended
to despise them, but not without a feeling of envy for those who did
possess them. I was very pleased to think that Sascha, such a serious
character, had toys, although he hid them shamefacedly; but I quite
understood his shame.
Opening the first box, he drew from it the frame of a pair of
spectacles, put them on his nose, and, looking at me sternly, said:
"It does not matter about there not being any glasses. This is a
special kind of spectacle."
"Let me look through them."
"They would not suit your eyes. They are for dark eyes, and yours are
light," he explained, and began to imitate the mistress scolding; but
suddenly he stopped, and looked about the kitchen with an expression of
fear.
In a blacking tin lay many different kinds of buttons, and he explained
to me with pride:
"I picked up all these in the street. All by myself! I already have
thirty-seven."
In the third box was a large brass pin, also found in the street;
hobnails, worn-out, broken, and whole; buckles off shoes and slippers;
brass door-handles, broken bone cane-heads; girls' fancy combs, 'The
Dream Book and Oracle;' and many other things of similar value.
When I used to collect rags I could have picked up ten times as many
such useless trifles in one month. Sascha's things aroused in me a
feeling of disillusion, of agitation, and painful pity for him. But he
gazed at every single article with great attention, lovingly stroked
them with his fingers, and stuck out his thick lips importantly. His
protruding eyes rested on them affectionately and solicitously; but the
spectacles made his childish face look comical.
"Why have you kept these things?"
He flashed a glance at me through the frame of the spectacles, and
asked:
"Would you like me to give you something?"
"No; I don't want anything."
He was obviously offended at the refusal and the poor impression his
riches had made. He was silent a moment; then he suggested quietly:
"Get a towel and wipe them all; they are covered with dust."
When the things were all dusted and replaced, he turned over in the
bed, with his face to the wall. The rain was pouring down. It dripped
from the roof, and the wind beat against the window. Without turning
toward me, Sascha said:
"You wait! When it is dry in the garden I will show you a
thing--something to make you gasp."
I did not answer, as I was just dropping off to sleep.
After a few seconds he started up, and began to scrape the wall with
his hands. With quivering earnestness, he said:
"I am afraid--Lord, I am afraid! Lord, have mercy upon me! What is it?"
I was numbed by fear at this. I seemed to see the cook standing at the
window which looked on the yard, with her back to me, her head bent,
and her forehead pressed against the glass, just as she used to stand
when she was alive, looking at a cock-fight. Sascha sobbed, and scraped
on the wall. I made a great effort and crossed the kitchen, as if I
were walking on hot coals, without daring to look around, and lay down
beside him. At length, overcome by weariness, we both fell asleep.
A few days after this there was a holiday. We were in the shop till
midday, had dinner at home, and when the master had gone to sleep after
dinner, Sascha said to me secretly:
"Come along!"
I guessed that I was about to see the thing which was to make me gasp.
We went into the garden. On a narrow strip of ground between two houses
stood ten old lime-trees, their stout trunks covered with green lichen,
their black, naked branches sticking up lifelessly, and not one rook's
nest between them. They looked like monuments in a graveyard. There
was nothing besides these trees in the garden; neither bushes nor
grass. The earth on the pathway was trampled and black, and as hard as
iron, and where the bare ground was visible under last year's leaves it
was also flattened, and as smooth as stagnant water.
Sascha went to a corner of the fence which hid us from the street,
stood under a lime-tree, and, rolling his eyes, glanced at the dirty
windows of the neighboring house. Squatting on his haunches, he turned
over a heap of leaves with his hands, disclosing a thick root, close to
which were placed two bricks deeply embedded in the ground. He lifted
these up, and beneath them appeared a piece of roof iron, and under
this a square board. At length a large hole opened before my eyes,
running under the root of the tree.
Sascha lit a match and applied it to a small piece of wax candle, which
he held over the hole as he said to me:
"Look in, only don't be frightened."
He seemed to be frightened himself. The piece of candle in his hand
shook, and he had turned pale. His lips drooped unpleasantly, his eyes
were moist, and he stealthily put his free hand behind his back. He
infected me with his terror, and I glanced very cautiously into the
depths under the root, which he had made into a vault, in the back of
which he had lit three little tapers that filled the cave with a blue
light. It was fairly broad, though in depth no more than the inside
of a pail. But it was broad, and the sides were closely covered with
pieces of broken glass and broken earthenware. In the center, on an
elevation, covered with a piece of red cloth, stood a little coffin
ornamented with silver paper, half covered with a fragment of material
which looked like a brocaded pall. From beneath this was thrust out a
little gray bird's claw and the sharp-billed head of a sparrow. Behind
the coffin rose a reading-stand, upon which lay a brass baptismal
cross, and around which burned three wax tapers, fixed in candlesticks
made out of gold and silver paper which had been wrapped round sweets.
The thin flames bowed toward the entrance to the cave. The interior
was faintly bright with many colored gleams and patches of light. The
odor of wax, the warm smell of decay and soil, beat against my face,
made my eyes smart, and conjured up a broken rainbow, which made a
great display of color. All this aroused in me such an overwhelming
astonishment that it dispelled my terror.
"Is it good?"
"What is it for?"
"It is a chapel," he explained. "Is it like one?"
"I don't know."
"And the sparrow is a dead person. Perhaps there will be relics of him,
because he suffered undeservedly."
"Did you find him dead?"
"No. He flew into the shed and I put my cap over him and smothered him."
"But why?"
"Because I chose to."
He looked into my eyes and asked again:
"Is it good?"
"No."
Then he bent over the hole, quickly covered it with the board, pressed
the bricks into the earth with the iron, stood up, and, brushing the
dirt from his knees, asked sternly:
"Why don't you like it?"
"I am sorry for the sparrow."
He stared at me with eyes which were perfectly stationary, like those
of a blind person, and, striking my chest, cried:
"Fool, it is because you are envious that you say that you do not like
it! I suppose you think that the one in your garden in Kanatnoe Street
was better done."
I remembered my summer-house, and said with conviction:
"Certainly it was better."
Sascha pulled off his coat and threw it on the ground, and, turning up
his sleeves, spat on his hands and said:
"If that is so, we will fight about it."
I did not want to fight. My courage was undermined by depression; I
felt uneasy as I looked at the wrathful face of my cousin. He made a
rush at me, struck my chest with his head, and knocked me over. Then he
sat astride of me and cried:
"Is it to be life or death?"
But I was stronger than he and very angry. In a few minutes he was
lying face downward with his hands behind his head and a rattling in
his throat. Alarmed, I tried to help him up, but he thrust me away with
his hands and feet. I grew still more alarmed. I went away to one side,
not knowing what else to do, and he raised his head and said:
"Do you know what you have brought on yourself? I will work things
so that when the master and mistress are not looking I shall have to
complain of you, and then they will dismiss you."
He went on scolding and threatening me, and his words infuriated me.
I rushed to the cave, took away the stones, and threw the coffin
containing the sparrow over the fence into the street. I dug Out all
the inside of the cave and trampled it under my feet.
Sascha took my violence strangely. Sitting on the ground, with his
mouth partly covered and his eyebrows drawn together, he watched me,
saying nothing. When I had finished, he stood up without any hurry,
shook out his clothes, threw on his coat, and then said calmly and
ominously:
"Now you will see what will happen; just wait a little! I arranged all
this for you purposely; it is witchcraft. Aha!"
I sank down as if his words had physically hurt me, and I felt quite
cold inside. But he went away without glancing back at me, which
accentuated his calmness still more. I made up my mind to run away
from the town the next day, to run away from my master, from Sascha
with his witchcraft, from the whole of that worthless, foolish life.
The next morning the new cook cried out when she called me:
"Good gracious! what have you been doing to your face?"
"The witchcraft is beginning to take effect," I thought, with a sinking
heart.
But the cook laughed so heartily that I also smiled involuntarily, and
peeped into her glass. My face was thickly smeared with soot.
"Sascha did this?" I asked.
"Or I," laughed the cook.
When I began to clean the boots, the first boot into which I put my
hand had a pin in the lining, which ran into my finger.
"This is his witchcraft!"
There were pins or needles in all the boots, put in so skilfully that
they always pricked my palm. Then I took a bowl of cold water, and with
great pleasure poured it over the head of the wizard, who was either
not awake or was pretending to sleep.
But all the same I was miserable. I was always thinking of the coffin
containing the sparrow, with its gray crooked claws and its waxen bill
pathetically sticking upward, and all around the colored gleams which
seemed to be trying unsuccessfully to form themselves into a rainbow.
In my imagination the coffin was enlarged, the claws of the bird grew,
stretched upward quivering, were alive.
I made up my mind to run away that evening, but in warming up some food
on an oil-stove before dinner I absent-mindedly let it catch fire.
When I was trying to put the flames out, I upset the contents of the
vessel over my hand, and had to be taken to the hospital. I remember
well that oppressive nightmare of the hospital. In what seemed to
be a yellow-gray wilderness there were huddled together, grumbling
and groaning, gray and white figures in shrouds, while a tall man
on crutches, with eyebrows like whiskers, pulled his black beard and
roared:
"I will report it to his Eminence!"
The pallet beds reminded me of the coffin, and the patients, lying with
their noses upward, were like dead sparrows. The yellow walls rocked,
the ceiling curved outward like a sail, the floor rose and fell beside
my cot. Everything about the place was hopeless and miserable, and the
twigs of trees tapped against the window like rods in some one's hand.
At the door there danced a red-haired, thin dead person, drawing his
shroud round him with his thin hands and squeaking:
"I don't want mad people."
The man on crutches shouted in his ear:
"I shall report it to his Eminence!"
Grandfather, grandmother, and every one had told me that they always
starved people in hospitals, so I looked upon my life as finished. A
woman with glasses, also in a shroud, came to me, and wrote something
on a slate hanging at the head of the bed. The chalk broke and fell all
over me.
"What is your name?"
"I have no name."
"But you must have one."
"No."
"Now, don't be silly, or you will be whipped."
I could well believe that they would whip me; that was why I would
not answer her. She made a hissing sound like a cat, and went out
noiselessly, also like a cat.
Two lamps were lit. The yellow globes hung down from the ceiling like
two eyes, hanging and winking, dazzled, and trying to get closer
together.
Some one in the corner said:
"How can I play without a hand?"
"Ah, of course; they have cut off your hand."
I came to the conclusion at once that they cut off a man's hand because
he played at cards! What would they do with me before they starved me?
My hands burned and smarted just as if some one were pulling the bones
out of them. I cried softly from fright and pain, and shut my eyes so
that the tears should not be seen; but they forced their way through my
eyelids, and, trickling over my temples, fell into my ears.
The night came. All the inmates threw themselves upon their pallet
beds, and hid themselves under gray blankets. Every minute it became
quieter. Only some one could be heard muttering in a comer, "It is no
use; both he and she are rotters."
I would have written a letter to grandmother, telling her to come and
steal me from the hospital while I was still alive, but I could not
write; my hands could not be used at all. I would try to find a way of
getting out of the place.
The silence of the night became more intense every moment, as if it
were going to last forever. Softly putting my feet to the floor, I went
to the double door, half of which was open. In the corridor, under the
lamp, on a wooden bench with a back to it, appeared a gray, bristling
head surrounded by smoke, looking at me with dark, hollow eyes. I had
no time to hide myself.
"Who is that wandering about? Come here!"
The voice was not formidable; it was soft. I went to him. I saw a round
face with short hair sticking out round it. On the head the hair was
long and stuck out in all directions like a silver halo, and at the
belt of this person hung a bunch of keys. If his beard and hair had
been longer, he would have looked like the Apostle Peter.
"You are the one with the burned hands? Why are you wandering about at
night? By whose authority?"
He blew a lot of smoke at my chest and face, and, putting his warm
hands on my neck, drew me to him.
"Are you frightened?"
"Yes."
"Every one is frightened when they come here first, but that is
nothing. And you need not be afraid of me, of all people. I never hurt
any one. Would you like to smoke? No, don't! It is too soon; wait a
year or two. And where are your parents? You have none? Ah, well, you
don't need them; you will be able to get along without them. Only you
must not be afraid, do you see?"
It was a long time since I had come across any one who spoke to me
simply and kindly in language that I could understand, and it was
inexpressibly pleasant to me to listen to him. When he took me back to
my cot I asked him:
"Come and sit beside me."
"All right," he agreed.
"Who are you?"
"I? I am a soldier, a real soldier, a Cossack. And I have been in the
wars--well, of course I have! Soldiers live for war. I have fought with
the Hungarians, with the Circassians, and the Poles, as many as you
like. War, my boy, is a great profession."
I closed my eyes for a minute, and when I opened them, there, in the
place of the soldier, sat grandmother, in a dark frock, and he was
standing by her. She was saying:
"Dear me! So they are all dead?"
The sun was playing in the room, now gilding every object, then hiding,
and then looking radiantly upon us all again, just like a child
frolicking.
Babushka bent over me and asked:
"What is it, my darling? They have been mutilating you? I told that old
red devil--"
"I will make all the necessary arrangements," said the soldier, going
away, and grandmother, wiping the tears from her face, said:
"Our soldier, it seems, comes from Balakhna."
I still thought that I must be dreaming, and kept silence. The doctor
came, bandaged my burns, and, behold! I was sitting with grandmother in
a cab, and driving through the streets of the town. She told me:
"That grandfather of ours he is going quite out of his mind, and he is
so greedy that it is sickening to look at him. Not long ago he took
a hundred rubles out of the office-book of Xlist the furrier, a new
friend of his. What a set-out there was! E-h-h-h!"
The sun shone brightly, and clouds floated in the sky like white birds.
We went by the bridge across the Volga. The ice groaned under us,
water was visible under the planks of the bridge, and the golden cross
gleamed over the red dome of the cathedral in the market-place.
We met a woman with a broad face. She was carrying an armful of
willow-branches. The spring was coming; soon it would be Easter.
"I love you very much, Grandmother!"
This did not seem to surprise her. She answered in a calm voice:
"That is because we are of the same family. But--and I do not say
it boastfully--there are others who love me, too, thanks to thee, O
Blessed Lady!" She added, smiling:
"She will soon be rejoicing; her Son will rise again! Ah, Variusha, my
daughter!"
Then she was silent.