I have sad and ludicrous reasons for remembering the burdensome
humiliations, insults, and alarms which my swiftly developed passion
for reading brought me.
The books of the tailor's wife looked as if they were terribly
expensive, and as I was afraid that the old mistress might burn them in
the stove, I tried not to think of them, and began to buy small colored
books from the shop where I bought bread in the mornings.
The shopkeeper was an ill-favored fellow with thick lips. He was given
to sweating, had a white, wizen face covered with scrofulous scars
and pimples, and his eyes were white. He had short, clumsy fingers on
puffy hands. His shop took the place of an evening club for grown-up
people; also for the thoughtless young girls living in the street. My
master's brother used to go there every evening to drink beer and play
cards. I was often sent to call him to supper, and more than once I
saw, in the small, stuffy room behind the shop, the capricious, rosy
wife of the shopkeeper sitting on the knee of Victorushka or some other
young fellow. Apparently this did not offend the shopkeeper; nor was he
offended when his sister, who helped him in the shop, warmly embraced
the drunken men, or soldiers, or, in fact any one who took her fancy.
The business done at the shop was small. He explained this by the fact
that it was a new business, although the shop had been open since
the autumn. He showed obscene pictures to his guests and customers,
allowing those who wished to copy the disgraceful verses beneath them.
I read the foolish little books of Mischa Evstignev, paying so many
copecks for the loan of them. This was dear, and the books afforded me
no pleasure at all. "Guyak, or, the Unconquerable Truth," "Franzl, the
Venitian," "The Battle of the Russians with the Kabardines," or "The
Beautiful Mahomedan Girl, Who Died on the Grave of her Husband,"--all
that kind of literature did not interest me either, and often aroused a
bitter irritation. The books seemed to be laughing at me, as at a fool,
when they told in dull words such improbable stories.
"The Marksmen," "Youri Miloslavski," "Monks' Secrets," "Yapacha, the
Tatar Freebooter," and such books I like better. I was the richer for
reading them; but what I liked better than all was the lives of the
saints. Here was something serious in which I could believe, and which
at times deeply stirred me. All the martyrs somehow reminded me of
"Good Business," and the female martyrs of grandmother, and the holy
men of grandfather in his best moments.
I used to read in the shed when I went there to chop wood, or in the
attic, which was equally uncomfortable and cold. Sometimes, if a book
interested me or I had to read it quickly, I used to get up in the
night and light the candle; but the old mistress, noticing that my
candle had grown smaller during the night, began to measure the candles
with a piece of wood, which she hid away somewhere. In the morning, if
my candle was not as long as the measure, or if I, having found the
measure, had not broken it to the length of the burned candle, a wild
cry arose from the kitchen. Sometimes Victorushka called out loudly
from the loft:
"Leave off that howling, Mamasha! You make life unbearable. Of course
he burns the candles, because he reads books. He gets them from the
shop. I know. Just look among his things in the attic."
The old woman ran up to the attic, found a book, and burned it to ashes.
This made me very angry, as you may imagine, but my love of reading
increased. I understood that if a saint had entered that household,
my employers would have set to work to teach him, tried to set him to
their own tune. They would have done this for something to do. If they
had left off judging people, scolding them, jeering at them, they would
have forgotten how to talk, would have been stricken with dumbness, and
would not have been themselves at all. When a man is aware of himself,
it must be through his relations with other people. My employers
could not behave themselves toward those about them otherwise than as
teachers, always ready to condemn; and if they had taught somebody to
live exactly as they lived themselves, to think and feel in the same
way, even then they would have condemned him for that very reason.
They were that sort of people.
I continued to read on the sly. The old woman destroyed books several
times, and I suddenly found myself in debt to the shopkeeper for the
enormous amount of forty-seven copecks. He demanded the money, and
threatened to take it from my employers' money when they sent me to
make purchases.
"What would happen then?" he asked jeeringly.
To me he was unbearably repulsive. Apparently he felt this, and
tortured me with various threats from which he derived a peculiar
enjoyment. When I went into the shop his pimply face broadened, and he
would ask gently:
"Have you brought your debt?"
"No."
This startled him. He frowned.
"How is that? Am I supposed to give you things out of charity? I shall
have to get it from you by sending you to the reformatory."
I had no way of getting the money, my wages were paid to grandfather.
I lost my presence of mind. What would happen to me? And in answer to
my entreaty that he wait for settlement of the debt, the shopkeeper
stretched out his oily, puffy hand, like a bladder, and said:
"Kiss my hand and I will wait."
But when I seized a weight from the counter and brandished it at him,
he ducked and cried:
"What are you doing? What are you doing? I was only joking."
Knowing well that he was not joking, I resolved to steal the money
to get rid of him. In the morning when I was brushing the master's
clothes, money jingled in his trousers' pockets, and sometimes it fell
out and rolled on the floor. Once some rolled into a crack in the
boards under the staircase. I forgot to say anything about this, and
remembered it only several days afterward when I found two _greven_
between the boards. When I gave it back to the master his wife said to
him:
"There, you see! You ought to count your money when you leave it in
your pockets."
But my master, smiling at me, said:
"He would not steal, I know."
Now, having made up my mind to steal, I remembered these words and
his trusting smile, and felt how hard it would be for me to rob him.
Several times I took silver out of the pockets and counted it, but I
could not take it. For three days I tormented myself about this, and
suddenly the whole affair settled itself quickly and simply. The master
asked me unexpectedly:
"What is the matter with you, Pyeshkov? You have become dull lately.
Are n't you well, or what?"
I frankly told him all my troubles. He frowned.
"Now you see what books lead to! From them, in some way or another,
trouble always comes."
He gave me half a ruble and admonished me sternly:
"Now look here; don't you go telling my wife or my mother, or there
will be a row."
Then he smiled kindly and said:
"You are very persevering, devil take you! Never mind; it is a good
thing. Anyhow, give up books. When the New Year comes, I will order a
good paper, and you can read that."
And so in the evenings, from tea-time till supper-time, I read aloud
to my employers "The Moscow Gazette," the novels of Bashkov, Rokshnin,
Rudinskovski, and other literature, for the nourishment of people who
suffered from deadly dullness.
I did not like reading aloud, for it hindered me from understanding
what I read. But my employers listened attentively, with a sort of
reverential eagerness, sighing, amazed at the villainy of the heroes,
and saying proudly to one another:
"And we live so quietly, so peacefully; we know nothing of such things,
thank God!"
They mixed up the incidents, ascribed the deeds of the famous brigand
Churkin to the post-boy Thoma Kruchin, and mixed the names. When I
corrected their mistakes they were surprised.
"What a memory he has!"
Occasionally the poems of Leonide Grave appeared in "The Moscow
Gazette." I was delighted with them. I copied several of them into a
note-book, but my employers said of the poet:
"He is an old man, you know; so he writes poetry." "A drunkard or an
imbecile, it is all the same."
I liked the poetry of Strujkin, and the Count Memento Mori, but both
the women said the verses were clumsy.
"Only the Petrushki or actors talk in verse."
It was a hard life for me on winter evenings, under the eyes of my
employers, in that close, small room. The dead night lay outside the
window, now and again the ice cracked. The others sat at the table
in silence, like frozen fish. A snow-storm would rattle the windows
and beat against the walls, howl down the chimney, and shake the
flue-plate. The children cried in the nursery. I wanted to sit by
myself in a dark corner and howl like a wolf.
At one end of the table sat the women, knitting socks or sewing. At the
other sat Victorushka, stooping, copying plans unwillingly, and from
time to time calling out:
"Don't shake the table! Goats, dogs, mice!"
At the side, behind an enormous embroidery-frame, sat the master,
sewing a tablecloth in cross-stitch. Under his fingers appeared red
lobsters, blue fish, yellow butterflies, and red autumn leaves. He had
made the design himself, and had sat at the work for three winters. He
had grown very tired of it, and often said to me in the daytime, when I
had some spare time:
"Come along, Pyeshkov; sit down to the tablecloth and do some of it!"
I sat down, and began to work with the thick needle. I was sorry for
my master, and always did my best to help him. I had an idea that one
day he would give up drawing plans, sewing, and playing at cards, and
begin doing something quite different, something interesting, about
which he often thought, throwing his work aside and gazing at it
with fixed, amazed eyes, as at something unfamiliar to him. His hair
fell over his forehead and cheeks; he looked like a laybrother in a
monastery.
"What are you thinking of?" his wife would ask him.
"Nothing in particular," he would reply, returning to his work.
I listened in dumb amazement. Fancy asking a man what he was thinking
of. It was a question which could not be answered. One's thoughts were
always sudden and many, about all that passed before one's eyes, of
what one saw yesterday or a year ago. It was all mixed up together,
elusive, constantly moving and changing.
The serial in "The Moscow Gazette" was not enough to last the evening,
and I went on to read the journals which were put away under the bed in
the bedroom. The young mistress asked suspiciously:
"What do you find to read there? It is all pictures."
But under the bed, besides the "Painting Review," lay also "Flames,"
and so we read "Count Tyatin-Baltiski," by Saliass. The master
took a great fancy to the eccentric hero of the story, and laughed
mercilessly, till the tears ran down his cheeks, at the melancholy
adventures of the hero, crying:
"Really, that is most amusing!"
"Piffle!" said the mistress to show her independence of mind.
The literature under the bed did me a great service. Through it, I had
obtained the right to read the papers in the kitchen, and thus made it
possible to read at night.
To my joy, the old woman went to sleep in the nursery for the nurse
had a drunken fit. Victorushka did not interfere with me. As soon as
the household was asleep, he dressed himself quietly, and disappeared
somewhere till morning. I was not allowed to have a light, for they
took the candles into the bedrooms, and I had no money to buy them for
myself; so I began to collect the tallow from the candlesticks on the
quiet, and put it in a sardine tin, into which I also poured lamp oil,
and, making a wick with some thread, was able to make a smoky light.
This I put on the stove for the night.
When I turned the pages of the great volumes, the bright red tongue
of flame quivered agitatedly, the wick was drowned in the burning,
evil-smelling fat, and the smoke made my eyes smart. But all this
unpleasantness was swallowed up in the enjoyment with which I looked at
the illustrations and read the description of them. These illustrations
opened up before me a world which increased daily in breadth--a world
adorned with towns, just like the towns of story-land. They showed me
lofty hills and lovely seashores. Life developed wonderfully for me.
The earth became more fascinating, rich in people, abounding in towns
and all kinds of things. Now when I gazed into the distance beyond the
Volga, I knew that it was not space which lay beyond, but before that,
when I had looked, it used to make me feel oddly miserable. The meadows
lay flat, bushes grew in clumps, and where the meadows ended, rose the
indented black wall of the forest. Above the meadows it was dull, cold
blue. The earth seemed an empty, solitary place. And my heart also
was empty. A gentle sorrow nipped it; all desires had departed, and I
thought of nothing. All I wanted was to shut my eyes. This melancholy
emptiness promised me nothing, and sucked out of my heart all that
there was in it.
The description of the illustrations told me in language which I could
understand about other countries, other peoples. It spoke of various
incidents of the past and present, but there was a lot which I did not
understand, and that worried me. Sometimes strange words stuck in my
brain, like "metaphysics," "chiliasm," "chartist." They were a source
of great anxiety to me, and seemed to grow into monsters obstructing my
vision. I thought that I should never understand anything. I did not
succeed in finding out the meaning of those words. In fact, they stood
like sentries on the threshold of all secret knowledge. Often whole
phrases stuck in my memory for a long time, like a splinter in my
finger, and hindered me from thinking of anything else.
I remembered reading these strange verses:
"All clad in steel, through the unpeopled land,
Silent and gloomy as the grave,
Rides the Czar of the Huns, Attilla.
Behind him comes a black mass of warriors, crying,
'Where, then, is Rome; where is Rome the mighty?'"
That Rome was a city, I knew; but who on earth were the Huns? I simply
had to find that out. Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master.
"The Huns?" he cried in amazement. "The devil knows who they are. Some
trash, I expect."
And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:
"That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is very bad, Pyeshkov."
Bad or good, I wanted to know.
I had an idea that the regimental chaplain, Soloviev, ought to know
who the Huns were, and when I caught him in the yard, I asked him. The
pale, sickly, always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows, and
a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the earth, said to me:
"And what is that to do with you, eh?"
Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a ferocious:
"What-a-t?"
Then I concluded that the right person to ask about the Huns was the
dispenser at the chemist's. He always looked at me kindly. He had a
clever face, and gold glasses on his large nose.
"The Huns," said the dispenser, "were a nomad race, like the people of
Khirgiz. There are no more of these people now. They are all dead."
I felt sad and vexed, not because the Huns were dead, but because the
meaning of the word that had worried me for so long was quite simple,
and was also of no use to me.
But I was grateful to the Huns after my collision with the word ceased
to worry me so much, and thanks to Attilla, I made the acquaintance of
the dispenser Goldberg.
This man knew the literal meaning of all words of wisdom. He had the
keys to all knowledge. Setting his glasses straight with two fingers,
he looked fixedly into my eyes and said, as if he were driving small
nails into my forehead:
"Words, my dear boy, are like leaves on a tree. If we want to find out
why the leaves take one form instead of another, we must learn how
the tree grows. We must study books, my dear boy. Men are like a good
garden in which everything grows, both pleasant and profitable."
I often had to run to the chemist's for soda-water and magnesia for the
adults of the family, who were continually suffering from heartburn,
and for castor-oil and purgatives for the children.
The short instructions which the dispenser gave me instilled into
my mind a still deeper regard for books. They gradually became as
necessary to me as vodka to the drunkard. They showed me a new life,
a life of noble sentiments and strong desires which incite people to
deeds of heroism and crimes. I saw that the people about me were fitted
for neither heroism nor crime. They lived apart from everything that
I read about in books, and it was hard to imagine what they found
interesting in their lives. I had no desire to live such a life. I was
quite decided on that point. I would not.
From the letterpress which accompanied the drawings I had learned that
in Prague, London, and Paris there are no open drains in the middle of
the city, or dirty gulleys choked with refuse. There were straight,
broad streets, and different kinds of houses and churches. There they
did not have a six-months-long winter, which shuts people up in their
houses, and no great fast, when only fermenting cabbage, pickled
mushrooms, oatmeal, and potatoes cooked in disgusting vegetable oil can
be eaten. During the great fast books are forbidden, and they took away
the "Review of Painting" from me, and that empty, meager life again
closed about me. Now that I could compare it with the life pictured in
books, it seemed more wretched and ugly than ever. When I could read
I felt well and strong; I worked well and quickly, and had an object
in life. The sooner I was finished, the more time I should have for
reading. Deprived of books, I became lazy, and drowsy, and became a
victim to forgetfulness, to which I had been a stranger before.
I remember that even during those dull days something mysterious
happened. One evening when we had all gone to bed the bell of the
cathedral suddenly rang out, arousing every one in the house at once.
Half-dressed people rushed to the windows, asking one another:
"Is it a fire? Is that the alarm-bell?"
In the other flats one could hear the same bustle going on. Doors
slammed; some one ran across the yard with a horse ready saddled. The
old mistress shrieked that the cathedral had been robbed, but the
master stopped her.
"Not so loud, Mamasha! Can't you hear that that is not an alarm-bell?"
"Then the archbishop is dead."
Victorushka climbed down from the loft, dressed himself, and muttered:
"I know what has happened. I know!"
The master sent me to the attic to see if the sky was red. I ran
up-stairs and climbed to the roof through the dormer-window. There was
no red light in the sky. The bell tolled slowly in the quiet frosty
air. The town lay sleepily on the earth. In the darkness invisible
people ran about, scrunching the snow under their feet. Sledges
squealed, and the bell wailed ominously. I returned to the sitting-room.
"There is no red light in the sky."
"Foo, you! Good gracious!" said the master, who had on his greatcoat
and cap. He pulled up his collar and began to put his feet into his
goloshes undecidedly.
The mistress begged him:
"Don't go out! Don't go out!"
"Rubbish!"
Victorushka, who was also dressed, teased them all.
"I know what has happened."
When the brothers went out into the street the women, having sent me to
get the samovar ready, rushed to the window. But the master rang the
street door-bell almost directly, ran up the steps silently, shut the
door, and said thickly:
"The Czar has been murdered!"
"How murdered?" exclaimed the old lady.
"He has been murdered. An officer told me so. What will happen now?"
Victorushka rang, and as he unwillingly took off his coat said angrily:
"And I thought it was war!"
Then they all sat down to drink tea, and talked together calmly, but in
low voices and cautiously. The streets were quiet now, the bells had
given up tolling. For two days they whispered together mysteriously,
and went to and fro. People also came to see them, and related some
event in detail. I tried hard to understand what had happened, but they
hid the newspapers from me. When I asked Sidorov why they had killed
the Czar he answered, softly:
"It is forbidden to speak of it."
But all this soon wore away. The old empty life was resumed, and I soon
had a very unpleasant experience.
On one of those Sundays when the household had gone to early mass I
set the samovar ready and turned my attention to tidying the rooms.
While I was so occupied the eldest child rushed into the kitchen,
removed the tap from the samovar, and set himself under the table to
play with it. There was a lot of charcoal in the pipe of the samovar,
and when the water had all trickled away from it, it came unsoldered.
While I was doing the other rooms, I heard an unusual noise. Going into
the kitchen, I saw with horror that the samovar was all blue. It was
shaking, as if it wanted to jump from the floor. The broken handle of
the tap was drooping miserably, the lid was all on one side, the pewter
was melted and running away drop by drop. In fact the purplish blue
samovar looked as if it had drunken shivers. I poured water over it. It
hissed, and sank sadly in ruins on the floor.
The front door-bell rang. I went to open the door. In answer to the old
lady's question as to whether the samovar was ready, I replied briefly:
"Yes; it is ready."
These words, spoken, of course, in my confusion and terror, were taken
for insolence. My punishment was doubled. They half killed me. The
old lady beat me with a bunch of fir-twigs, which did not hurt much,
but left under the skin of my back a great many splinters, driven in
deeply. Before night my back was swollen like a pillow, and by noon the
next day the master was obliged to take me to the hospital.
When the doctor, comically tall and thin, examined me, he said in a
calm, dull voice:
"This is a case of cruelty which will have to be investigated."
My master blushed, shuffled his feet, and said something in a low voice
to the doctor, who looked over his head and said shortly:
"I can't. It is impossible."
Then he asked me:
"Do you want to make a complaint?"
I was in great pain, but I said:
"No, make haste and cure me."
They took me into another room, laid me on a table, and the doctor
pulled out the splinters with pleasantly cold pincers. He said,
jestingly:
"They have decorated your skin beautifully, my friend; now you will be
waterproof."
When he had finished his work of pricking me unmercifully, he said:
"Forty-two splinters have been taken out, my friend. Remember that. It
is something to boast of! Come back at the same time to-morrow to have
the dressing replaced. Do they often beat you?"
I thought for a moment, then said:
"Not so often as they used to."
The doctor burst into a hoarse laugh.
"It is all for the best, my friend, all for the best." When he took me
back to my master he said to him:
"I hand him over to you; he is repaired. Bring him back to-morrow
without fail. I congratulate you. He is a comical fellow you have
there."
When we were in the cab my master said to me:
"They used to beat me too, Pyeshkov. What do you think of that? They
did beat me, my lad! And you have me to pity you; but I had no one, no
one. People are very hard everywhere; but one gets no pity--no, not
from any one. Ekh! Wild fowl!"
He grumbled all the way home. I was very sorry for him, and grateful to
him for treating me like a man.
They welcomed me at the house as if it had been my name-day. The women
insisted on hearing in detail how the doctor had treated me and what he
had said. They listened and sighed, then kissed me tenderly, wrinkling
their brows. This intense interest in illness, pain, and all kinds of
unpleasantness always amazed me.
I saw that they were pleased with me for not complaining of them, and I
took advantage of the moment to ask if I might have some books from the
tailor's wife. They did not have the heart to refuse me. Only the old
lady cried in surprise:
"What a demon he is!"
The next day I stood before the tailor's wife, who said to me kindly:
"They told me that you were ill, and that you had been taken to
hospital. You see what stories get about."
I was silent. I was ashamed to tell her the truth. Why should she
know of such sad and coarse things? It was nice to think that she was
different from other people.
Once more I read the thick books of Dumas _père_, Ponson de Terraille,
Montepaine, Zakonier, Gaboriau, and Bourgobier. I devoured all these
books quickly, one after the other, and I was happy. I felt myself
to be part of a life which was out of the ordinary, which stirred
me sweetly and aroused my courage. Once more I burned my improvised
candle, and read all through the night till the morning, so that my
eyes began to hurt me a little. The old mistress said to me kindly:
"Take care, bookworm. You will spoil your sight and grow blind!"
However, I soon realized that all these interestingly complicated
books, despite the different incidents, and the various countries
and towns about which they were written, had one common theme: good
people made unhappy and oppressed by bad people, the latter were always
more successful and clever than the good, but in the end something
unexpected always overthrowing the wicked, and the good winning. The
"love," of which both men and women spoke in the same terms, bored me.
In fact, it was not only uninteresting to me, but it aroused a vague
contempt.
Sometimes from the very first chapters I began to wonder who would win
or who would be vanquished, and as soon as the course of the story
became clear, I would set myself to unravel the skein of events by the
aid of my own fancy. When I was not reading I was thinking of the books
I had on hand, as one would think about the problems in an arithmetic.
I became more skilful every day in guessing which of the characters
would enter into the paradise of happiness and which would be utterly
confounded.
But through all this I saw the glimmer of living and, to me,
significant truths, the outlines of another life, other standards. It
was clear to me that in Paris the cabmen, working men, soldiers, and
all "black people"[1] were not at all as they were in Nijni, Kazan,
or Perm. They dared to speak to gentlefolk, and behaved toward them
more simply and independently than our people. Here, for example, was
a soldier quite unlike any I had known, unlike Sidorov, unlike the
Viatskian on the boat, and still more unlike Ermokhin. He was more
human than any of these. He had something of Smouri about him, but he
was not so savage and coarse. Here was a shopkeeper, but he was much
better than any of the shopkeepers I had known. And the priests in
books were not like the priests I knew. They had more feeling, and
seemed to enter more into the lives of their flocks. And in general
it seemed to me that life abroad, as it appeared in books, was more
interesting, easier, better than the life I knew. Abroad, people did
not behave so brutally. They never jeered at other human creatures
as cruelly as the Viatskian soldier had been jeered at, nor prayed
to God as importunately as the old mistress did. What I noticed
particularly was that, when villains, misers, and low characters were
depicted in books, they did not show that incomprehensible cruelty,
that inclination to jeer at humanity, with which I was acquainted, and
which was often brought to my notice. There was method in the cruelty
of these bookish villains. One could almost always understand why they
were cruel; but the cruelty which I witnessed was aimless, senseless,
an amusement from which no one expected to gain any advantage.
[Footnote 1: The common people.]
With every book that I read this dissimilarity between Russian life and
that of other countries stood out more clearly, causing a perplexed
feeling of irritation within me, strengthening my suspicion of the
veracity of the old, well-read pages with their dirty "dogs'-ears."
And then there fell into my hands Goncourt's novel, "The Brothers
Zemganno." I read it through in one night, and, surprised at the new
experience, read the simple, pathetic story over again. There was
nothing complicated about it, nothing interesting at first sight. In
fact, the first pages seemed dry, like the lives of the saints. Its
language, so precise and stripped of all adornment, was at first an
unpleasant surprise to me; but the paucity of words, the strongly
constructed phrases, went straight to the heart. It so aptly described
the drama of the acrobat brothers that my hands trembled with the
enjoyment of reading the book. I wept bitterly as I read how the
unfortunate artist, with his legs broken, crept up to the loft where
his brother was secretly engaged in his favorite art.
When I returned this glorious book to the tailor's wife I begged her to
give me another one like it.
"How do you mean like that?" she asked, laughing.
This laugh confused me, and I could not explain what I wanted. Then she
said:
"That is a dull book. Just wait! I will give you another more
interesting."
In the course of a day or two she gave me Greenwood's "The True History
of a little Waif." The title of the book at first turned me against it,
but the first pages called up a smile of joy, and still smiling, I read
it from beginning to end, re-reading some of the pages two or three
times.
So in other countries, also, boys lived hard and harassing lives! After
all, I was not so badly off; I need not complain.
Greenwood gave me a lot of courage, and soon after that I was given a
"real" book, "Eugénie Grandet."
_Old Grandet_ reminded me vividly of grandfather. I was annoyed
that the book was so small, and surprised at the amount of truth it
contained. Truths which were familiar and boring to me in life were
shown to me in a different light in this book, without malice and quite
calmly. All the books which I had read before Greenwood's, condemned
people as severely and noisily as my employers did, often arousing my
sympathy for the villain and a feeling of irritation with the good
people. I was always sorry to see that despite enormous expenditure of
intelligence and willpower, a man still failed to obtain his desires.
The good characters stood awaiting events from first to last page, as
immovable as stone pillars, and although all kinds of evil plots were
formed against these stone pillars, stones do not arouse sympathy. No
matter how beautiful and strong a wall may be, one does not love it
if one wants to get the apple on the tree on the other side of it. It
always seemed to me that all that was most worth having, and vigorous
was hidden behind the "good" people.
In Goncourt, Greenwood, and Balzac there were no villains, but just
simple people, wonderfully alive. One could not doubt that, whatever
they were alleged to have said and done, they really did say and do,
and they could not have said and done anything else.
In this fashion I learned to understand what a great treat a "good and
proper" book can be. But how to find it? The tailor's wife could not
help me in this.
"Here is a good book," she said, laying before me Arsène Huissier's
"Hands full of Roses, Gold, and Blood." She also gave me the novels of
Beyle, Paul de Kock and Paul Féval, and I read them all with relish.
She liked the novels of Mariette and Vernier, which to me appeared
dull. I did not care for Spielhagen, but I was much taken with the
stories of Auerbach. Sue and Huga, also, I did not like, preferring
Walter Scott. I wanted books which excited me, and made me feel happy,
like wonderful Balzac.
I did not care for the porcelain woman as much as I had done at first.
When I went to see her, I put on a clean shirt, brushed my hair, and
tried to appear good-looking. In this I was hardly successful. I always
hoped that, seeing my good looks, she would speak to me in a simple and
friendly manner, without that hsh-like smile on her frivolous face. But
all she did was to smile and ask me in her sweet, tired voice:
"Have you read it? Did you like it?"
"No."
Slightly raising her eyebrows, she looked at me, and, drawing in her
breath, spoke through her nose.
"But why?"
"I have read about all that before."
"Above what?"
"About love."
Her eyes twinkled, as she burst out into her honeyed laugh.
"_Ach_, but you see all books are written about love!"
Sitting in a big arm-chair, she swung her small feet, incased in fur
slippers, to and fro, yawned, wrapped her blue dressing-gown around
her, and drummed with her pink fingers on the cover of the book on her
knee. I wanted to say to her:
"Why don't you leave this flat? The officers write letters to you, and
laugh at you."
But I had not the audacity to say this, and went away, bearing with me
a thick book on "Love," a sad sense of disenchantment in my heart.
They talked about this woman in the yard more evilly, derisively,
and spitefully than ever. It offended me to hear these foul and, no
doubt, lying stories. When I was away from her, I pitied the woman, and
suffered for her; but when I was with her, and saw her small, sharp
eyes, the cat-like flexibility of her small body, and that always
frivolous face, pity and fear disappeared, vanished like smoke.
In the spring she suddenly went away, and in a few days her husband
moved to new quarters.
While the rooms stood empty, awaiting a new tenant, I went to look at
the bare walls, with their square patches where pictures had hung, bent
nails, and wounds made by nails. Strewn about the stained floor were
pieces of different-colored cloth, balls of paper, broken boxes from
the chemist, empty scent-bottles. A large brass pin gleamed in one spot.
All at once I felt sad and wished that I could see the tailor's little
wife once more to tell her how grateful I was to her.