I
Volodya Lovlev, a pale meagre lad of twelve, had returned home from
school and was waiting for his dinner. He was standing in the
drawing-room at the piano, and was turning over the pages of the latest
number of the _Niva_ which had come only that morning.
A leaflet of thin grey paper fell out; it was an announcement issued by
an illustrated journal. It enumerated the future contributors—the list
contained about fifty well-known literary names; it praised at some
length the journal as a whole and in detail its many-sidedness, and it
presented several specimen illustrations.
Volodya began to turn the pages of the leaflet in an absent way and to
look at the miniature pictures. His large eyes, looked wearily out of
his pale face.
One page suddenly caught his attention, and his wide eyes opened
slightly wider. Running from top to bottom were six drawings of hands
throwing shadows in dark silhouette upon a white wall—the shadows
representing the head of a girl with an amusing three-cornered hat, the
head of a donkey, of a bull, the sitting figure of a squirrel, and
other similar things.
Volodya smiled and looked very intently at them. He was quite familiar
with this amusement. He could hold the fingers of one hand so as to
cast a silhouette of a hare’s head on the wall. But this was quite
another matter, something that Volodya had not seen before; its
interest for him was that here were quite complex figures cast by using
both hands.
Volodya suddenly wished to reproduce these shadows. Of course there was
no use trying now, in the uncertain light of a late autumn afternoon.
He had better try it later in his own room. In any case, it was of no
use to any one.
Just then he heard the approaching footsteps and voice of his mother.
He flushed for some reason or other and quickly put the leaflet into
his pocket, and left the piano to meet her. She looked at him with a
caressing smile as she came toward him; her pale, handsome face greatly
resembled his, and she had the same large eyes.
She asked him, as she always did: “Well, what’s the news to-day?”
“There’s nothing new,” said Volodya dejectedly.
But it occurred to him at once that he was being ungracious, and he
felt ashamed. He smiled genially and began to recall what had happened
at school; but this only made him feel sadder.
“Pruzhinin has again distinguished himself,” and he began to tell about
the teacher who was disliked by his pupils for his rudeness. “Lentyev
was reciting his lesson and made a mess of it, and so Pruzhinin said to
him: ‘Well, that’s enough; sit down, blockhead!’”
“Nothing escapes you,” said his mother, smiling.
“He’s always rude.”
After a brief silence Volodya sighed, then complained: “They are always
in a hurry.”
“Who?” asked his mother.
“I mean the masters. Every one is anxious to finish his course quickly
and to make a good show at the examination. And if you ask a question
you are immediately suspected of trying to take up the time until the
bell rings, and to avoid having questions put to you.”
“Do you talk much after the lessons?”
“Well, yes—but there’s the same hurry after the lessons to get home, or
to study the lessons in the girls’ class-rooms. And everything is done
in a hurry—you are no sooner done with the geometry than you must study
your Greek.”
“That’s to keep you from yawning.”
“Yawning! I’m more like a squirrel going round on its cage-wheel. It’s
exasperating.”
His mother smiled lightly.