A high, spacious bedroom, the corner room of our house, with a wide bed
upon which our mother is lying, our baby chairs and tables standing
close by, and the neatly served tables covered with sweets and jellies
in pretty glass jars--a room into which we children are ushered at a
strange hour---this is the first half-distinct reminiscence of my life.
Our mother was dying of consumption; she was only thirty-five years
old. Before parting with us for ever, she had wished to have us by her
side, to caress us, to feel happy for a moment in our joys, and she had
arranged this little treat by the side of her bed which she could leave
no more, I remember her pale thin face, her large, dark brown eyes. She
looked at us with love, and invited us to eat, to climb upon her bed;
then suddenly she burst into tears and began to cough, and we were told
to go.
Some time after, we children--that is, my brother Alexander and
myself--were removed from the big house to a small side house in the
courtyard. The April sun filled the little rooms with its rays, but
our German nurse Madame Búrman and Uliána, our Russian nurse, told
us to go to bed. Their faces wet with tears, they were sewing for us
black shirts fringed with broad white tassels. We could not sleep: the
unknown frightened us, and we listened to their subdued talk. They said
something about our mother which we could not understand. We jumped
out of our beds, asking, ‘Where is mamma? Where is mamma?’
Both of them burst into sobs, and began to pat our curly heads, calling
us ‘poor orphans,’ until Uliána could hold out no longer, and said,
‘Your mother is gone there--to the sky, to the angels.’
‘How to the sky? Why?’ our infantile imagination in vain demanded.
This was in April 1846. I was only three and a half years old, and
my brother Sásha not yet five. Where our elder brother and sister,
Nicholas and Hélène, had gone I do not know: perhaps they were already
at school. Nicholas was twelve years old, Hélène was eleven; they kept
together, and we knew them but little. So we remained, Alexander and
I, in this little house, in the hands of Madame Búrman and Uliána.
The good old German lady, homeless and absolutely alone in the wide
world, took toward us the place of our mother. She brought us up as
well as she could, buying us from time to time some simple toys, and
overfeeding us with ginger cakes whenever another old German, who used
to sell such cakes--probably as homeless and solitary as herself--paid
an occasional visit to our house. We seldom saw our father, and the
next two years passed without leaving any impression on my memory.