frantic with terror, not knowing where to run, turned towards it. Beside
the window was a porch with steps, and a front door with a white board
on it; Pashka ran up the steps, looked in at the window, and was at once
possessed by intense overwhelming joy. Through the window he saw the
merry affable doctor sitting at the table reading a book. Laughing with
happiness, Pashka stretched out his hands to the person he knew and
tried to call out, but some unseen force choked him and struck at his
legs; he staggered and fell down on the steps unconscious.
When he came to himself it was daylight, and a voice he knew very well,
that had promised him a fair, finches, and a fox, was saying beside him:
"Well, you are an idiot, Pashka! Aren't you an idiot? You ought to be
beaten, but there's no one to do it."
GRISHA
GRISHA, a chubby little boy, born two years and eight months ago, is
walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He is wearing a long, wadded
pelisse, a scarf, a big cap with a fluffy pom-pom, and warm over-boots.
He feels hot and stifled, and now, too, the rollicking April sunshine is
beating straight in his face, and making his eyelids tingle.
The whole of his clumsy, timidly and uncertainly stepping little figure
expresses the utmost bewilderment.
Hitherto Grisha has known only a rectangular world, where in one corner
stands his bed, in the other nurse's trunk, in the third a chair, while
in the fourth there is a little lamp burning. If one looks under the
bed, one sees a doll with a broken arm and a drum; and behind nurse's
trunk, there are a great many things of all sorts: cotton reels, boxes
without lids, and a broken Jack-a-dandy. In that world, besides nurse
and Grisha, there are often mamma and the cat. Mamma is like a doll, and
puss is like papa's fur-coat, only the coat hasn't got eyes and a tail.
From the world which is called the nursery a door leads to a great
expanse where they have dinner and tea. There stands Grisha's chair on
high legs, and on the wall hangs a clock which exists to swing its
pendulum and chime. From the dining-room, one can go into a room where
there are red arm-chairs. Here, there is a dark patch on the carpet,
concerning which fingers are still shaken at Grisha. Beyond that room is
still another, to which one is not admitted, and where one sees glimpses
of papa--an extremely enigmatical person! Nurse and mamma are
comprehensible: they dress Grisha, feed him, and put him to bed, but
what papa exists for is unknown. There is another enigmatical person,
auntie, who presented Grisha with a drum. She appears and disappears.
Where does she disappear to? Grisha has more than once looked under the
bed, behind the trunk, and under the sofa, but she was not there.
In this new world, where the sun hurts one's eyes, there are so many
papas and mammas and aunties, that there is no knowing to whom to run.
But what is stranger and more absurd than anything is the horses. Grisha
gazes at their moving legs, and can make nothing of it. He looks at his
nurse for her to solve the mystery, but she does not speak.
All at once he hears a fearful tramping. . . . A crowd of soldiers, with
red faces and bath brooms under their arms, move in step along the
boulevard straight upon him. Grisha turns cold all over with terror, and
looks inquiringly at nurse to know whether it is dangerous. But nurse
neither weeps nor runs away, so there is no danger. Grisha looks after
the soldiers, and begins to move his feet in step with them himself.
Two big cats with long faces run after each other across the boulevard,
with their tongues out, and their tails in the air. Grisha thinks that
he must run too, and runs after the cats.
"Stop!" cries nurse, seizing him roughly by the shoulder. "Where are you
off to? Haven't you been told not to be naughty?"
Here there is a nurse sitting holding a tray of oranges. Grisha passes
by her, and, without saying anything, takes an orange.
"What are you doing that for?" cries the companion of his travels,
slapping his hand and snatching away the orange. "Silly!"
Now Grisha would have liked to pick up a bit of glass that was lying at
his feet and gleaming like a lamp, but he is afraid that his hand will
be slapped again.
"My respects to you!" Grisha hears suddenly, almost above his ear, a
loud thick voice, and he sees a tall man with bright buttons.
To his great delight, this man gives nurse his hand, stops, and begins
talking to her. The brightness of the sun, the noise of the carriages,
the horses, the bright buttons are all so impressively new and not
dreadful, that Grisha's soul is filled with a feeling of enjoyment and
he begins to laugh.
"Come along! Come along!" he cries to the man with the bright buttons,
tugging at his coattails.
"Come along where?" asks the man.
"Come along!" Grisha insists.
He wants to say that it would be just as well to take with them papa,
mamma, and the cat, but his tongue does not say what he wants to.
A little later, nurse turns out of the boulevard, and leads Grisha into
a big courtyard where there is still snow; and the man with the bright
buttons comes with them too. They carefully avoid the lumps of snow and
the puddles, then, by a dark and dirty staircase, they go into a room.
Here there is a great deal of smoke, there is a smell of roast meat, and
a woman is standing by the stove frying cutlets. The cook and the nurse
kiss each other, and sit down on the bench together with the man, and
begin talking in a low voice. Grisha, wrapped up as he is, feels
insufferably hot and stifled.
"Why is this?" he wonders, looking about him.
He sees the dark ceiling, the oven fork with two horns, the stove which
looks like a great black hole.
"Mam-ma," he drawls.
"Come, come, come!" cries the nurse. "Wait a bit!"
The cook puts a bottle on the table, two wine-glasses, and a pie. The
two women and the man with the bright buttons clink glasses and empty
them several times, and, the man puts his arm round first the cook and
then the nurse. And then all three begin singing in an undertone.
Grisha stretches out his hand towards the pie, and they give him a piece
of it. He eats it and watches nurse drinking. . . . He wants to drink
too.
"Give me some, nurse!" he begs.
The cook gives him a sip out of her glass. He rolls his eyes, blinks,
coughs, and waves his hands for a long time afterwards, while the cook
looks at him and laughs.
When he gets home Grisha begins to tell mamma, the walls, and the bed
where he has been, and what he has seen. He talks not so much with his
tongue, as with his face and his hands. He shows how the sun shines, how
the horses run, how the terrible stove looks, and how the cook drinks. .
. .
In the evening he cannot get to sleep. The soldiers with the brooms, the
big cats, the horses, the bit of glass, the tray of oranges, the bright
buttons, all gathered together, weigh on his brain. He tosses from side
to side, babbles, and, at last, unable to endure his excitement, begins
crying.
"You are feverish," says mamma, putting her open hand on his forehead.
"What can have caused it?
"Stove!" wails Grisha. "Go away, stove!"
"He must have eaten too much . . ." mamma decides.
And Grisha, shattered by the impressions of the new life he has just
experienced, receives a spoonful of castor-oil from mamma.
OYSTERS
I NEED no great effort of memory to recall, in every detail, the rainy
autumn evening when I stood with my father in one of the more frequented
streets of Moscow, and felt that I was gradually being overcome by a
strange illness. I had no pain at all, but my legs were giving way under
me, the words stuck in my throat, my head slipped weakly on one side . .
. It seemed as though, in a moment, I must fall down and lose
consciousness.
If I had been taken into a hospital at that minute, the doctors would
have had to write over my bed: Fames, a disease which is not in the
manuals of medicine.
Beside me on the pavement stood my father in a shabby summer overcoat
and a serge cap, from which a bit of white wadding was sticking out. On
his feet he had big heavy goloshes. Afraid, vain man, that people would
see that his feet were bare under his goloshes, he had drawn the tops of
some old boots up round the calves of his legs.
This poor, foolish, queer creature, whom I loved the more warmly the
more ragged and dirty his smart summer overcoat became, had come to
Moscow, five months before, to look for a job as copying-clerk. For
those five months he had been trudging about Moscow looking for work,
and it was only on that day that he had brought himself to go into the
street to beg for alms.
Before us was a big house of three storeys, adorned with a blue
signboard with the word "Restaurant" on it. My head was drooping feebly
backwards and on one side, and I could not help looking upwards at the
lighted windows of the restaurant. Human figures were flitting about at
the windows. I could see the right side of the orchestrion, two
oleographs, hanging lamps . . . . Staring into one window, I saw a patch
of white. The patch was motionless, and its rectangular outlines stood
out sharply against the dark, brown background. I looked intently and
made out of the patch a white placard on the wall. Something was written
on it, but what it was, I could not see. . .
For half an hour I kept my eyes on the placard. Its white attracted my
eyes, and, as it were, hypnotised my brain. I tried to read it, but my
efforts were in vain.
At last the strange disease got the upper hand.
The rumble of the carriages began to seem like thunder, in the stench of
the street I distinguished a thousand smells. The restaurant lights and
the lamps dazzled my eyes like lightning. My five senses were
overstrained and sensitive beyond the normal. I began to see what I had
not seen before.
"Oysters . . ." I made out on the placard.
A strange word! I had lived in the world eight years and three months,
but had never come across that word. What did it mean? Surely it was not
the name of the restaurant-keeper? But signboards with names on them
always hang outside, not on the walls indoors!
"Papa, what does 'oysters' mean?" I asked in a husky voice, making an
effort to turn my face towards my father.
My father did not hear. He was keeping a watch on the movements of the
crowd, and following every passer-by with his eyes. . . . From his eyes
I saw that he wanted to say something to the passers-by, but the fatal
word hung like a heavy weight on his trembling lips and could not be
flung off. He even took a step after one passer-by and touched him on
the sleeve, but when he turned round, he said, "I beg your pardon," was
overcome with confusion, and staggered back.
"Papa, what does 'oysters' mean?" I repeated.
"It is an animal . . . that lives in the sea."
I instantly pictured to myself this unknown marine animal. . . . I
thought it must be something midway between a fish and a crab. As it was
from the sea they made of it, of course, a very nice hot fish soup with
savoury pepper and laurel leaves, or broth with vinegar and fricassee of
fish and cabbage, or crayfish sauce, or served it cold with horse-
radish. . . . I vividly imagined it being brought from the market,
quickly cleaned, quickly put in the pot, quickly, quickly, for everyone
was hungry . . . awfully hungry! From the kitchen rose the smell of hot
fish and crayfish soup.
I felt that this smell was tickling my palate and nostrils, that it was
gradually taking possession of my whole body. . . . The restaurant, my
father, the white placard, my sleeves were all smelling of it, smelling
so strongly that I began to chew. I moved my jaws and swallowed as
though I really had a piece of this marine animal in my mouth . . .
My legs gave way from the blissful sensation I was feeling, and I
clutched at my father's arm to keep myself from falling, and leant
against his wet summer overcoat. My father was trembling and shivering.
He was cold . . .
"Papa, are oysters a Lenten dish?" I asked.
"They are eaten alive . . ." said my father. "They are in shells like
tortoises, but . . . in two halves."
The delicious smell instantly left off affecting me, and the illusion
vanished. . . . Now I understood it all!
"How nasty," I whispered, "how nasty!"
So that's what "oysters" meant! I imagined to myself a creature like a
frog. A frog sitting in a shell, peeping out from it with big,
glittering eyes, and moving its revolting jaws. I imagined this creature
in a shell with claws, glittering eyes, and a slimy skin, being brought
from the market. . . . The children would all hide while the cook,
frowning with an air of disgust, would take the creature by its claw,
put it on a plate, and carry it into the dining-room. The grown-ups
would take it and eat it, eat it alive with its eyes, its teeth, its
legs! While it squeaked and tried to bite their lips. . . .
I frowned, but . . . but why did my teeth move as though I were
munching? The creature was loathsome, disgusting, terrible, but I ate
it, ate it greedily, afraid of distinguishing its taste or smell. As
soon as I had eaten one, I saw the glittering eyes of a second, a third
. . . I ate them too. . . . At last I ate the table-napkin, the plate,
my father's goloshes, the white placard . . . I ate everything that
caught my eye, because I felt that nothing but eating would take away my
illness. The oysters had a terrible look in their eyes and were
loathsome. I shuddered at the thought of them, but I wanted to eat! To
eat!
"Oysters! Give me some oysters!" was the cry that broke from me and I
stretched out my hand.
"Help us, gentlemen!" I heard at that moment my father say, in a hollow
and shaking voice. "I am ashamed to ask but--my God!--I can bear no more!"
"Oysters!" I cried, pulling my father by the skirts of his coat.
"Do you mean to say you eat oysters? A little chap like you!" I heard
laughter close to me.
Two gentlemen in top hats were standing before us, looking into my face
and laughing.
"Do you really eat oysters, youngster? That's interesting! How do you
eat them?"
I remember that a strong hand dragged me into the lighted restaurant. A
minute later there was a crowd round me, watching me with curiosity and
amusement. I sat at a table and ate something slimy, salt with a flavour
of dampness and mouldiness. I ate greedily without chewing, without
looking and trying to discover what I was eating. I fancied that if I
opened my eyes I should see glittering eyes, claws, and sharp teeth.
All at once I began biting something hard, there was a sound of a
scrunching.
"Ha, ha! He is eating the shells," laughed the crowd. "Little silly, do
you suppose you can eat that?"
After that I remember a terrible thirst. I was lying in my bed, and
could not sleep for heartburn and the strange taste in my parched mouth.
My father was walking up and down, gesticulating with his hands.
"I believe I have caught cold," he was muttering. "I've a feeling in my
head as though someone were sitting on it. . . . Perhaps it is because I
have not . . . er . . . eaten anything to-day. . . . I really am a
queer, stupid creature. . . . I saw those gentlemen pay ten roubles for
the oysters. Why didn't I go up to them and ask them . . . to lend me
something? They would have given something."
Towards morning, I fell asleep and dreamt of a frog sitting in a shell,
moving its eyes. At midday I was awakened by thirst, and looked for my
father: he was still walking up and down and gesticulating.
HOME
"SOMEONE came from the Grigoryevs' to fetch a book, but I said you were
not at home. The postman brought the newspaper and two letters. By the
way, Yevgeny Petrovitch, I should like to ask you to speak to Seryozha.
To-day, and the day before yesterday, I have noticed that he is smoking.
When I began to expostulate with him, he put his fingers in his ears as
usual, and sang loudly to drown my voice."
Yevgeny Petrovitch Bykovsky, the prosecutor of the circuit court, who
had just come back from a session and was taking off his gloves in his
study, looked at the governess as she made her report, and laughed.
"Seryozha smoking . . ." he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I can
picture the little cherub with a cigarette in his mouth! Why, how old is
he?"
"Seven. You think it is not important, but at his age smoking is a bad
and pernicious habit, and bad habits ought to be eradicated in the
beginning."
"Perfectly true. And where does he get the tobacco?"
"He takes it from the drawer in your table."
"Yes? In that case, send him to me."
When the governess had gone out, Bykovsky sat down in an arm-chair
before his writing-table, shut his eyes, and fell to thinking. He
pictured his Seryozha with a huge cigar, a yard long, in the midst of
clouds of tobacco smoke, and this caricature made him smile; at the same
time, the grave, troubled face of the governess called up memories of
the long past, half-forgotten time when smoking aroused in his teachers
and parents a strange, not quite intelligible horror. It really was
horror. Children were mercilessly flogged and expelled from school, and
their lives were made a misery on account of smoking, though not a
single teacher or father knew exactly what was the harm or sinfulness of
smoking. Even very intelligent people did not scruple to wage war on a
vice which they did not understand. Yevgeny Petrovitch remembered the
head-master of the high school, a very cultured and good-natured old
man, who was so appalled when he found a high-school boy with a
cigarette in his mouth that he turned pale, immediately summoned an
emergency committee of the teachers, and sentenced the sinner to
expulsion. This was probably a law of social life: the less an evil was
understood, the more fiercely and coarsely it was attacked.
The prosecutor remembered two or three boys who had been expelled and
their subsequent life, and could not help thinking that very often the
punishment did a great deal more harm than the crime itself. The living
organism has the power of rapidly adapting itself, growing accustomed
and inured to any atmosphere whatever, otherwise man would be bound to
feel at every moment what an irrational basis there often is underlying
his rational activity, and how little of established truth and certainty
there is even in work so responsible and so terrible in its effects as
that of the teacher, of the lawyer, of the writer. . . .
And such light and discursive thoughts as visit the brain only when it
is weary and resting began straying through Yevgeny Petrovitch's head;
there is no telling whence and why they come, they do not remain long in
the mind, but seem to glide over its surface without sinking deeply into
it. For people who are forced for whole hours, and even days, to think
by routine in one direction, such free private thinking affords a kind
of comfort, an agreeable solace.
It was between eight and nine o'clock in the evening. Overhead, on the
second storey, someone was walking up and down, and on the floor above
that four hands were playing scales. The pacing of the man overhead who,
to judge from his nervous step, was thinking of something harassing, or
was suffering from toothache, and the monotonous scales gave the
stillness of the evening a drowsiness that disposed to lazy reveries. In
the nursery, two rooms away, the governess and Seryozha were talking.
"Pa-pa has come!" carolled the child. "Papa has co-ome. Pa! Pa! Pa!"
"Votre père vous appelle, allez vite!" cried the governess, shrill as a
frightened bird. "I am speaking to you!"
"What am I to say to him, though?" Yevgeny Petrovitch wondered.
But before he had time to think of anything whatever his son Seryozha, a
boy of seven, walked into the study.
He was a child whose sex could only have been guessed from his dress:
weakly, white-faced, and fragile. He was limp like a hot-house plant,
and everything about him seemed extraordinarily soft and tender: his
movements, his curly hair, the look in his eyes, his velvet jacket.
"Good evening, papa!" he said, in a soft voice, clambering on to his
father's knee and giving him a rapid kiss on his neck. "Did you send for
me?"
"Excuse me, Sergey Yevgenitch," answered the prosecutor, removing him
from his knee. "Before kissing we must have a talk, and a serious talk .
. . I am angry with you, and don't love you any more. I tell you, my
boy, I don't love you, and you are no son of mine. . . ."
Seryozha looked intently at his father, then shifted his eyes to the
table, and shrugged his shoulders.
"What have I done to you?" he asked in perplexity, blinking. "I haven't
been in your study all day, and I haven't touched anything."
"Natalya Semyonovna has just been complaining to me that you have been
smoking. . . . Is it true? Have you been smoking?"
"Yes, I did smoke once. . . . That's true. . . ."
"Now you see you are lying as well," said the prosecutor, frowning to
disguise a smile. "Natalya Semyonovna has seen you smoking twice. So you
see you have been detected in three misdeeds: smoking, taking someone
else's tobacco, and lying. Three faults."
"Oh yes," Seryozha recollected, and his eyes smiled. "That's true,
that's true; I smoked twice: to-day and before."
"So you see it was not once, but twice. . . . I am very, very much
displeased with you! You used to be a good boy, but now I see you are
spoilt and have become a bad one."
Yevgeny Petrovitch smoothed down Seryozha's collar and thought:
"What more am I to say to him!"
"Yes, it's not right," he continued. "I did not expect it of you. In the
first place, you ought not to take tobacco that does not belong to you.
Every person has only the right to make use of his own property; if he
takes anyone else's . . . he is a bad man!" ("I am not saying the right
thing!" thought Yevgeny Petrovitch.) "For instance, Natalya Semyonovna
has a box with her clothes in it. That's her box, and we--that is, you
and I--dare not touch it, as it is not ours. That's right, isn't it?
You've got toy horses and pictures. . . . I don't take them, do I?
Perhaps I might like to take them, but . . . they are not mine, but
yours!"
"Take them if you like!" said Seryozha, raising his eyebrows. "Please
don't hesitate, papa, take them! That yellow dog on your table is mine,
but I don't mind. . . . Let it stay."
"You don't understand me," said Bykovsky. "You have given me the dog, it
is mine now and I can do what I like with it; but I didn't give you the
tobacco! The tobacco is mine." ("I am not explaining properly!" thought
the prosecutor. "It's wrong! Quite wrong!") "If I want to smoke someone
else's tobacco, I must first of all ask his permission. . . ."
Languidly linking one phrase on to another and imitating the language
of the nursery, Bykovsky tried to explain to his son the meaning of
property. Seryozha gazed at his chest and listened attentively (he liked
talking to his father in the evening), then he leaned his elbow on the
edge of the table and began screwing up his short-sighted eyes at the
papers and the inkstand. His eyes strayed over the table and rested on
the gum-bottle.
"Papa, what is gum made of?" he asked suddenly, putting the bottle to
his eyes.
Bykovsky took the bottle out of his hands and set it in its place and
went on:
"Secondly, you smoke. . . . That's very bad. Though I smoke it does not
follow that you may. I smoke and know that it is stupid, I blame myself
and don't like myself for it." ("A clever teacher, I am!" he thought.)
"Tobacco is very bad for the health, and anyone who smokes dies earlier
than he should. It's particularly bad for boys like you to smoke. Your
chest is weak, you haven't reached your full strength yet, and smoking
leads to consumption and other illness in weak people. Uncle Ignat died
of consumption, you know. If he hadn't smoked, perhaps he would have
lived till now."
Seryozha looked pensively at the lamp, touched the lamp-shade with his
finger, and heaved a sigh.
"Uncle Ignat played the violin splendidly!" he said. "His violin is at
the Grigoryevs' now."
Seryozha leaned his elbows on the edge of the table again, and sank into
thought. His white face wore a fixed expression, as though he were
listening or following a train of thought of his own; distress and
something like fear came into his big staring eyes. He was most likely
thinking now of death, which had so lately carried off his mother and
Uncle Ignat. Death carries mothers and uncles off to the other world,
while their children and violins remain upon the earth. The dead live
somewhere in the sky beside the stars, and look down from there upon the
earth. Can they endure the parting?
"What am I to say to him?" thought Yevgeny Petrovitch. "He's not
listening to me. Obviously he does not regard either his misdoings or my
arguments as serious. How am I to drive it home?"
The prosecutor got up and walked about the study.