Grandfather and grandmother had again gone into the town. I went to
them, prepared to be angry and warlike; but my heart was heavy. Why had
they accounted me a thief?
Grandmother greeted me tenderly, and at once went to prepare the
samovar. Grandfather asked as mockingly as usual:
"Have you saved much money?"
"What there is belongs to me," I answered, taking a seat by the window.
I triumphantly produced a box of cigarettes from my pocket and began to
smoke importantly.
"So-o-o," said grandfather, looking at me fixedly--"so that sit! You
smoke the devil's poison? Isn't it rather soon?"
"Why, I have even had a pouch given to me," I boasted.
"A pouch?" squeaked grandfather. "What! Are you saying this to annoy
me?"
He rushed upon me, with his thin, strong hands outstretched, his green
eyes flashing. I leaped up, and stuck my head into his stomach. The old
man sat on the floor, and for several oppressive moments looked at me,
amazedly blinking, his dark mouth open. Then he asked quietly:
"You knock me down, your grandfather? The father of your mother?"
"You have knocked me about enough in the past," I muttered, not
understanding that I had acted abominably.
Withered and light, grandfather rose from the floor, sat beside me,
deftly snatched the cigarette from me, threw it out of the window, and
said in a tone of fear:
"You mad fool! Don't you understand that God will punish you for this
for the rest of your life? Mother,"--he turned to grandmother,--"did
you see that? He knocked me down--he! Knocked me down! Ask him!"
She did not wait to ask. She simply came over to me, seized me by the
hair, and beat me, saying:
"And for that--take this--and this!"
I was not hurt, but I felt deeply insulted, especially by grandfather's
laughter. He jumped on a chair, slapped his legs with his hands, and
croaked through his laughter:
"Th-a-t's right! Tha-a-t's right!"
I tore myself away, and ran out to the shed, where I lay in a corner
crushed, desolate, listening to the singing of the samovar.
Then grandmother came to me, bent over me, and whispered hardly audibly:
"You must forgive me, for I purposely did not hurt you. I could not
do otherwise than I did, for grandfather is an old man. He has to be
treated with care. He has fractured some of his small bones, and,
besides, sorrow has eaten into his heart. You must never do him any
harm. You are not a little boy now. You must remember that. You must,
Olesha! He is like a child, and nothing more."
Her words laved me like warm water. That friendly whisper made me feel
ashamed of myself, and, light-hearted, I embraced her warmly. We kissed.
"Go to him. Go along. It is all right, only don't smoke before him yet.
Give him time to get used to the idea."
I went back to the room, glanced at grandfather, and could hardly keep
from laughing. He really was as pleased as a child. He was radiant,
twisting his feet, and running his paws through his red hair as he sat
by the table.
"Well, goat, have you come to butt me again? Ach, you--brigand! Just
like your father! Freemason! You come back home, never cross yourself;
and start smoking at once. Ugh, you--Bonaparte! you copeck's worth of
goods!"
I said nothing. He had exhausted his supply of words and was silent
from fatigue. But at tea he began to lecture me.
"The fear of God is necessary to men; it is like a bridle to a horse.
We have no friend except God. Man is a cruel enemy to man." That men
were my enemies, I felt was the truth, but the rest did not interest me.
"Now you will go back to Aunt Matrena, and in the spring you can go on
a steamboat again. Live with them during the winter. And you need not
tell them that you are leaving in the spring."
"Now, why should he deceive people?" said grandmother, who had just
deceived grandfather by pretending to give me a beating.
"It is impossible to live without deceit," declared grandfather. "Just
tell me now. Who lives without deceiving others?"
In the evening, while grandfather was reading his office, grandmother
and I went out through the gate into the fields. The little cottage
with two windows in which grandfather lived was on the outskirts of the
town, at the back of Kanatni Street, where grandfather had once had his
own house.
"So here we are again!" said grandmother, laughing. "The old man cannot
find a resting-place for his soul, but must be ever on the move. And he
does not even like it here; but I do."
Before us stretched for about three versts fields of scanty herbage,
intersected by ditches, bounded by woods and the line of birches on
the Kazan highroad. From the ditches the twigs of bushes projected,
the rays of a cold sunset reddened them like blood. A soft evening
breeze shook the gray blades of grass. From a nearer pathway, also like
blades of grass, showed the dark form of town lads and girls. On the
right, in the distance, stood the red walls of the burial-ground of the
Old Believers. They called it "The Bugrovski Hermitage." On the left,
beyond the causeway, rose a dark group of trees; there was the Jewish
cemetery. All the surroundings were poor, and seemed to lie close to
the wounded earth. The little houses on the outskirts of the town
looked timidly with their windows on the dusty road. Along the road
wandered small, ill-fed fowl. Toward the Dyevichia Monastery went a
herd of lowing cows, from the camp came the sound of martial music. The
brass instruments brayed.
A drunken man came along, ferociously holding out a harmonica. He
stumbled and muttered:
"I am coming to thee--without fail."
"Fool!" said grandmother, blinking in the red sunlight. "Where are you
going? Soon you will fall down and go to sleep, and you will be robbed
in your sleep. You will lose your harmonica, your consolation."
I told her all about the life on the boat as I looked about me. After
what I had seen I found it dull here; I felt like a fish out of water.
Grandmother listened in silence and with attention, just as I liked to
listen to her. When I told her about Smouri she crossed herself and
said:
"He is a good man, help him, Mother of God; he is good! Take care, you,
that you do not forget him! You should always remember what is good,
and what is bad simply forget."
It was very difficult for me to tell her why they had dismissed me, but
I took courage and told her. It made no impression whatever on her.
She merely said calmly:
"You are young yet; you don't know how to live."
"That is what they all say to one another, 'You don't know how to
live'--peasants, sailors, Aunt Matrena to her son. But how does one
learn?"
She compressed her lips and shook her head.
"I don't know myself."
"And yet you say the same as the others!"
"And why should I not say it?" replied grandmother, calmly. "You must
not be offended. You are young; you are not expected to know. And who
does know, after all? Only rogues. Look at your grandfather. Clever and
well educated as he is, yet he does not know."
"And you--have you managed your life well?"
"I? Yes. And badly also; all ways."
People sauntered past us, with their long shadows following them. The
dust rose like smoke under their feet, burying those shadows. Then the
evening sadness became more oppressive. The sound of grandfather's
grumbling voice flowed from the window:
"Lord, in Thy wrath do not condemn me, nor in Thy rage punish me!"
Grandmother said, smiling:
"He has made God tired of him. Every evening he has his tale of woe,
and about what? He is old now, and he does not need anything; yet he is
always complaining and working himself into a frenzy about something.
I expect God laughs when He hears his voice in the evening. There's
Vassili Kashirin grumbling again!' Come and go to bed now." . . . . . .
. .
I made up my mind to take up the occupation of catching singing-birds.
I thought it would be a good way of earning a living. I would catch
them, and grandmother would sell them. I bought a net, a hoop, and a
trap, and made a cage. At dawn I took my place in a hollow among the
bushes, while grandmother went in the woods with a basket and a bag to
find the last mushrooms, bulbs, and nuts.
The tired September sun had only just risen. Its pale rays were now
extinguished by clouds, now fell like a silver veil upon me in the
causeway. At the bottom of the hollow it was still dusk, and a white
mist rose from it. Its clayey sides were dark and bare, and the other
side, which was more sloping, was covered with grass, thick bushes, and
yellow, brown, and scarlet leaves. A fresh wind raised them and swept
them along the ditch.
On the ground, among the turnip-tops, the goldfinch uttered its cry. I
saw, among the ragged, gray grass, birds with red caps on their lively
heads. About me fluttered curious titmouses. They made a great noise
and fuss, comically blowing out their white cheeks, just like the young
men of Kunavin Street on a Sunday. Swift, clever, spiteful, they wanted
to know all and to touch everything, and they fell into the trap one
after the other. It was pitiful to see how they beat their wings, but
my business was strictly commerce. I changed the birds over into the
spare cage and hid them in a bag. In the dark they kept quiet.
A flock of siskins settled on a hawthorn-bush. The bush was suffused
by sunlight. The siskins were glad of the sun and chirped more merrily
than ever. Their antics were like those of schoolboys. The thirsty,
tame, speckled magpie, late in setting out on his journey to a warmer
country, sat on the bending bough of a sweetbriar, cleaning his wing
feathers and insolently looking at his prey with his black eyes. The
lark soared on high, caught a bee, and, carefully depositing it on a
thorn, once more settled on the ground, with his thievish head alert.
Noiselessly flew the talking-bird,--the hawfinch,--the object of my
longing dreams, if only I could catch him. A bullfinch, driven from the
flock, was perched on an alder-tree. Red, important, like a general, he
chirped angrily, shaking his black beak.
The higher the sun mounted, the more birds there were, and the more
gayly they sang. The hollow was full of the music of autumn. The
ceaseless rustle of the bushes in the wind, and the passionate songs
of the birds, could not drown that soft, sweetly melancholy noise. I
heard in it the farewell song of summer. It whispered to me words meant
for my ears alone, and of their own accord they formed themselves into
a song. At the same time my memory unconsciously recalled to my mind
pictures of the past. From somewhere above grandmother cried:
"Where are you?"
She sat on the edge of the pathway. She had spread out a handkerchief
on which she had laid bread, cucumber, turnips, and apples. In the
midst of this display a small, very beautiful cut-glass decanter stood.
It had a crystal stopper, the head of Napoleon, and in the goblet was a
measure of vodka, distilled from herbs.
"How good it is, O Lord!" said grandmother, gratefully.
"I have composed a song."
"Yes? Well?"
I repeated to her something which I thought was like poetry.
"That winter draws near the signs are many;
Farewell to thee, my summer sun!"
But she interrupted without hearing me out.
"I know a song like that, only it is a better one."
And she repeated in a singsong voice:
"_Oi_, the summer sun has gone
To dark nights behind the distant woods!
_Ekh!_ I am left behind, a maiden,
Alone, without the joys of spring.
Every morn I wander round;
I trace the walks I took in May.
The bare fields unhappy look;
There it was I lost my youth.
_Oi,_ my friends, my kind friends,
Take my heart from my white breast,
Bury my heart in the snow!"
My conceit as an author suffered not a little, but I was delighted with
this song, and very sorry for the girl.
Grandmother said:
"That is how grief sings. That was made up by a young girl, you know.
She went out walking all the springtime, and before the winter her dear
love had thrown her over, perhaps for another girl. She wept because
her heart was sore. You cannot speak well and truly on what you have
not experienced for yourself. You see what a good song she made up."
When she sold a bird for the first time, for forty copecks, she was
very surprised.
"Just look at that! I thought it was all nonsense, just a boy's
amusement; and it has turned out like this!"
"You sold it too cheaply."
"Yes; well?"
On market-days she sold them for a ruble, and was more surprised than
ever. What a lot one might earn by just playing about!
"And a woman spends whole days washing clothes or cleaning floors for a
quarter of a ruble, and here you just catch them! But it is n't a nice
thing to do, you know, to keep birds in a cage. Give it up, Olesha!"
But bird-catching amused me greatly; I liked it. It gave me my
independence and inconvenienced no one but the birds. I provided myself
with good implements. Conversations with old bird-catchers taught me a
lot. I went alone nearly three versts to catch birds: to the forest of
Kstocski, on the banks of the Volga, where in the tall fir-trees lived
and bred crossbills, and most valuable to collectors, the Apollyon
titmouse, a long-tailed, white bird of rare beauty.
Sometimes I started in the evening and stayed out all night, wandering
about on the Kasanski high-road, and sometimes in the autumn rains and
through deep mud. On my back I carried an oilskin bag in which were
cages, with food to entice the birds. In my hand was a solid cane of
walnut wood. It was cold and terrifying in the autumn darkness, very
terrifying. There stood by the side of the road old lightning-riven
birches; wet branches brushed across my head. On the left under the
hill, over the black Volga, floated rare lights on the masts of the
last boats and barges, looking as if they were in an unfathomable
abyss. The wheels splashed in the water, the sirens shrieked.
From the hard ground rose the huts of the road-side villages. Angry,
hungry dogs ran in circles round my legs. The watchman collided with
me, and cried in terror:
"Who is that? He whom the devils carry does not come out till night,
they say."
I was very frightened lest my tackle should be taken from me, and I
used to take five-copeck pieces with me to give to the watchmen. The
watchman of the village of Thokinoi made friends with me, and was
always groaning over me.
"What, out again? O you fearless, restless night-bird, eh?"
His name was Niphront. He was small and gray, like a saint. He drew out
from his breast a turnip, an apple, a handful of peas, and placed them
in my hand, saying:
"There you are, friend. There is a little present for you. Eat and
enjoy it." And conducting me to the bounds of the village, he said,
"Go, and God be with you!"
I arrived at the forest before dawn, laid my traps, and spreading out
my coat, lay on the edge of the forest and waited for the day to come.
It was still. Everything was wrapped in the deep autumn sleep. Through
the gray mist the broad meadows under the hill were hardly visible.
They were cut in two by the Volga, across which they met and separated
again, melting away in the fog. In the distance, behind the forest on
the same side as the meadows, rose without hurry the bright sun. On
the black mane of the forest lights flashed out, and my heart began
to stir strangely, poignantly. Swifter and swifter the fog rose from
the meadows, growing silver in the rays of the sun, and, following it,
the bushes, trees, and hayricks rose from the ground. The meadows were
simply flooded with the sun's rays and flowed on each side, red-gold.
The sun just glanced at the still water by the bank, and it seemed as
if the whole river moved toward the sun as it rose higher and higher,
joyfully blessed and warmed the denuded, chilled earth, which gave
forth the sweet smell of autumn. The transparent air made the earth
look enormous, boundlessly wide. Everything seemed to be floating in
the distance, and to be luring one to the farthest ends of the world.
I saw the sunrise ten times during those months, and each time a new
world was born before my eyes, with a new beauty.
I loved the sun so much that its very name delighted me. The sweet
sound of it was like a bell hidden in it. I loved to close my eyes and
place my face right in the way of its hot rays to catch it in my hands
when it came, like a sword, through the chinks of the fence or through
the branches. Grandfather had read over and over again "Prince Mikhail
Chemigovski and the Lady Theodora who would not Worship the Sun," and
my idea of these people was that they were black, like Gipsies, harsh,
malignant, and always had bad eyes, like poor Mordovans. When the sun
rose over the meadows I involuntarily smiled with joy.
Over me murmured the forest of firs, shaking off the drops of dew with
its green paws. In the shadows and on the fern-leaves glistened, like
silver brocade, the rime of the morning frost. The reddening grass was
crushed by the rain; immovable stalks bowed their heads to the ground:
but when the sun's rays fell on them a slight stir was noticeable among
the herbs, as if, may be, it was the last effort of their lives.
The birds awoke. Like gray balls of down, they fell from bough to
bough. Flaming crossbills pecked with their crooked beaks the knots
on the tallest firs. On the end of the fir-branches sang a white
Apollyon titmouse, waving its long, rudder-like tail, looking askance
suspiciously with its black, beady eyes at the net which I had spread.
And suddenly the whole forest, which a minute ago had been solemnly
pensive, was filled with the sound of a thousand bird-voices, with the
bustle of living beings, the purest on the earth. In their image, man,
the father of earthly beauty, created for his own consolation, elves,
cherubim, and seraphim, and all the ranks of angels.
I was rather sorry to catch the little songsters, and had scruples
about squeezing them into cages. I would rather have merely looked at
them; but the hunter's passion and the desire to earn money drove away
my pity.
The birds mocked me with their artfulness. The blue titmouse, after
a careful examination of the trap, understood her danger, and,
approaching sidewise without running any risk, helped herself to some
seed between the sticks of the trap. Titmouses are very clever, but
they are very curious, and that is their undoing. The proud bullfinches
are stupid, and flocks of them fall into the nets, like over-fed
citizens into a church. When they find themselves shut up, they are
very astonished, roll their eyes, and peck my fingers with their stout
beaks. The crossbill entered the trap calmly and seriously. This
grasping, ignorant bird, unlike all the others, used to sit for a long
time before the net, stretching out his long beak, and leaning on
his thick tail. He can run up the trunk of trees like the woodpecker,
always escorting the titmouse. About this smoke-gray singing-bird there
is something unpleasant. No one loves it. And it loves no one. Like the
magpie, it likes to steal and hide bright things.
Before noon I had finished my catch, and went home through the forest.
If I had gone by the high-road past the villages, the boys and young
men would have taken my cages away from me and broken up my tackle. I
had already experienced that once.
I arrived home in the evening tired and hungry, but I felt that I had
grown older, had learned something new, and had gained strength during
that day. This new strength gave me the power to listen calmly and
without resentment to grandfather's jeers; seeing which, grandfather
began to speak sensibly and seriously.
"Give up this useless business! Give it up! No one ever got on through
birds. Such a thing has never happened that I know of. Go and find
another place, and let your intelligence grow up there. Man has not
been given life for nothing; he is God's grain, and he must produce an
ear of corn. Man is like a ruble; put out at good interest it produces
three rubles. You think life is easy to live? No, it is not all easy.
The world of men is like a dark night, but every man must make his own
light. To every person is given enough for his ten fingers to hold, but
every one wants to grasp by handfuls. One should be strong, but if one
is weak, one must be artful. He who has little strength is weak, and
he is neither in heaven nor in hell. Live as if you are with others,
but remember that you are alone. Whatever happens, never trust any
one. If you believe your own eyes, you will measure crookedly. Hold
your tongue. Neither town or house was built by the tongue, but rubles
are made by the ax. You are neither a fool nor a Kalmuck, to whom all
riches are like lice on sheep."
He could talk like this all the evening, and I knew his words by heart.
The words pleased me, but I distrusted their meaning. From what he said
it was plain that two forces hindered man from doing as he wished, God
and other people.
Seated at the window, grandmother wound the cotton for her lace. The
spindle hummed under her skilful hands. She listened for a long time to
grandfather's speech in silence, then she suddenly spoke.
"It all depends upon whether the Mother of God smiles upon us."
"What's that?" cried grandfather. "God! I have not forgotten about God.
I know all about God. You old fool, has God sown fools on the earth,
eh?"
*
In my opinion the happiest people on earth were Cossacks and soldiers.
Their lives were simple and gay. On fine mornings they appeared in the
hollow near our house quite early. Scattering over the bare fields like
white mushrooms, they began a complicated, interesting game. Agile
and strong in their white blouses, they ran about the field with
guns in their hands, disappeared in the hollow, and suddenly, at the
sound of the bugle, again spread themselves over the field with shouts
of "Hurrah!" accompanied by the ominous sounds of the drum. They ran
straight at our house with fixed bayonets, and they looked as if they
would knock it down and sweep it away, like a hayrick, in a minute.
I cried "Hurrah!" too, and ran with them, quite carried away. The
wicked rattle of the drum aroused in me a passionate desire to destroy
something, to break down the fence, to hit other boys. When they were
resting, the soldiers used to give me a treat by teaching me how to
signal and by showing me their heavy guns. Sometimes one of them would
stick his bayonet into my stomach and cry, with a pretense of anger:
"Stick the cockroach!"
The bayonet gleamed; it looked as if it were alive, and seemed to wind
about like a snake about to coil itself up. It was rather terrifying,
but more pleasant.
The Mordovan drummer taught me to strike the drum with my fingers. At
first he used to take me by the wrist, and, moving them so that he hurt
me, would thrust the sticks into my crushed fingers.
"Hit it--one, two-one-tw-o-o! Rum te--tum! Beat it--left--softly,
right--loudly, rum te--!" he shouted threateningly, opening wide his
bird-like eyes.
I used to run about the field with the soldiers, almost to the end of
the drill, and after it was finished, I used to escort them across
the town to the barracks, listening to their loud songs, looking into
their kind faces, all as new as five-ruble pieces just coined. The
close-packed mass of happy men passing up the streets in one united
body aroused a feeling of friendliness in me, a desire to throw myself
in among them as into a river, to enter into them as into a forest.
These men were frightened of nothing; they could conquer anything; they
were capable of anything; they could do anything they liked; and they
were all simple and good.
But one day during the time they were resting a young non-commissioned
officer gave me a fat cigarette.
"Smoke this! I would not give them to any one. In fact I hardly like to
give you one, my dear boy, they are so good."
I smoked it. He moved away a few steps, and suddenly a red flame
blinded me, burning my fingers, my nose, my eyebrows. A gray, acrid
smoke made me splutter and cough. Blinded, terrified, I stamped on the
ground, and the soldiers, who had formed a ring around me, laughed
loudly and heartily. I ran away home. Whistles and laughter followed
me; something cracked like a shepherd's whip. My burned fingers hurt
me, my face smarted, tears flowed from my eyes; but it was not the pain
which oppressed me, only a heavy, dull amazement. Why should this amuse
these good fellows?
When I reached home I climbed up to the attic and sat there a long time
brooding over this inexplicable cruelty which stood so repulsively
in my path. I had a peculiarly clear and vivid memory of the little
soldier from Sarapulia standing before me, as large as life, and saying:
"Well, do you understand?"
Soon I had to go through something still more depressing and disgusting.
I had begun to run about in the barracks of the Cossacks, which
stood near the Pecherski Square. The Cossacks seemed different from
the soldiers, not because they rode so skilfully oh horseback and
were dressed more beautifully, but because they spoke in a different
way, sang different songs, and danced beautifully. In the evening,
after they had seen to their horses, they used to gather in a ring
near the stables, and a little red-haired Cossack, shaking his tufts
of hair, sang softly in a high-pitched voice, like a trumpet. The
long-drawn-out, sad song flowed out upon the Don and the blue Dounia.
His eyes were closed, like the eyes of a linnet, which often sings till
it falls dead from the branch to the ground. The collar of his Cossack
shirt was undone. His collar-bone was visible, looking like a copper
band. In fact, he was altogether metallic, coppery. Swaying on his thin
legs, as if the earth under him were rocking, spreading out his hands,
he seemed sightless, but full of sound. He, as it were, ceased to be
a man, and became a brass instrument. Sometimes it seemed to me that
he was falling, that he would fall on his back to the ground, and die
like the linnet, because he put into the song all his soul and all his
strength.
With their hands in their pockets or behind their broad backs, his
comrades stood round in a ring, sternly looking at his brassy face.
Beating time with their hands, softly spitting into space, they joined
in earnestly, softly, as if they were in the choir in church. All of
them, bearded and shaven, looked like icons, stern and set apart from
other people. The song was long, like a long street, and as level, as
broad and as wide. When I listened to him I forgot everything else,
whether it was day or night upon the earth, whether I was an old man or
a little boy. Everything else was forgotten. The voice of the singer
died away. The sighs of the horses were audible as they grieved for
their native steppes, and gently, but surely, the autumn night crept
up from the fields. My heart swelled and almost burst with a multitude
of extraordinary feelings, and a great, speechless love for human
creatures and the earth.
The little copper-colored Cossack seemed to me to be no man, but
something much more significant--a legendary being, better and on a
higher plane than ordinary people. I could not talk to him. When he
asked me a question I smiled blissfully and remained shyly silent. I
was ready to follow him anywhere, silently and humbly, like a dog. All
I wanted was to see him often, and to hear him sing.