I
At times Sashka wished to give up what is called living: to cease to
wash every morning in cold water, on which thin sheets of ice floated
about; to go no more to the grammar school, and there to have to listen
to every one scolding him; no more to experience the pain in the small
of his back and indeed over his whole body when his mother made him
kneel in the corner all the evening. But, since he was only thirteen
years of age, and did not know all the means by which people abandon
life at will, he continued to go to the grammar school and to kneel in
the corner, and it seemed to him as if life would never end. A year
would go by, and another, and yet another, and still he would be going
to school, and be made to kneel in the corner. And since Sashka
possessed an indomitable and bold spirit, he could not supinely
tolerate evil, and so found means to avenge himself on life. With this
object in view he would thrash his companions, be rude to the Head,
impertinent to the masters, and tell lies all day long to his teachers
and to his mother—but to his father only he never lied. If in a fight
he got his nose broken, he would purposely make the damage worse, and
howl, without shedding a single tear, but so loudly that all who heard
him were fain to stop their ears to keep out the disagreeable sound.
When he had howled as long as thought advisable, he would suddenly
cease, and, putting out his tongue, draw in his copy-book a caricature
of himself howling at an usher who pressed his fingers to his ears,
while the victor stood trembling with fear. The whole copy-book was
filled with caricatures, the one which most frequently occurred being
that of a short stout woman beating a boy as thin as a lucifer-match
with a rolling pin. Below in a large scrawling hand would be written
the legend: “Beg my pardon, puppy!” and the reply, “Won’t! blow’d if I
do!”
Before Christmas Sashka was expelled from school, and when his mother
attempted to thrash him, he bit her finger. This action gave him his
liberty. He left off washing in the morning, ran about all day bullying
the other boys, and had but one fear, and that was hunger, for his
mother entirely left off providing for him, so that he came to depend
upon the pieces of bread and potatoes which his father secreted for
him. On these conditions Sashka found existence tolerable.
One Friday (it was Christmas Eve) he had been playing with the other
boys, until they had dispersed to their homes, followed by the squeak
of the rusty frozen wicket gate as it closed behind the last of them.
It was already growing dark, and a grey snowy mist was travelling up
from the country, along a dark alley; in a low black building, which
stood fronting the end of the alley, a lamp was burning with a reddish,
unblinking light. The frost had become more intense, and when Sashka
reached the circle of light cast by the lamp, he saw that fine dry
flakes of snow were floating slowly on the air. It was high time to be
getting home.
“Where have you been knocking about all night, puppy?” exclaimed his
mother doubling her fist, without, however, striking. Her sleeves were
turned up, exposing her fat white arms, and on her forehead, almost
devoid of eyebrows, stood beads of perspiration. As Sashka passed by
her he recognized the familiar smell of vodka. His mother scratched her
head with the short dirty nail of her thick fore-finger, and since it
was no good scolding, she merely spat, and cried: “Statisticians!
that’s what they are!”
Sashka shuffled contemptuously, and went behind the partition, from
whence might be heard the heavy breathing of his father, Ivan Savvich,
who was in a chronic state of shivering, and was now trying to warm
himself by sitting on the heated bench of the stove with his hands
under him, palms downwards.
“Sashka! the Svetchnikovs have invited you to the Christmas tree. The
housemaid came,” he whispered.
“Get along with you!” said Sashka with incredulity.
“Fact! The old woman there has purposely not told you, but she has
mended your jacket all the same.”
“Non—sense,” Sashka replied, still more surprised.
The Svetchnikovs were rich people, who had put him to the grammar
school, and after his expulsion had forbidden him their house.
His father once more took his oath to the truth of his statement, and
Sashka became meditative.
“Well then, move, shift a bit,” he said to his father, as he leapt upon
the short bench, adding:
“I won’t go to those devils. I should prove jolly well too much for
them, if I were to turn up. _Depraved boy_,” drawled Sashka in
imitation of his patrons. “They are none too good themselves, the
smug-faced prigs!”
“Oh! Sashka, Sashka,” his father complained, sitting hunched up with
cold, “you’ll come to a bad end.”
“What about yourself, then?” was Sashka’s rude rejoinder. “Better shut
up. Afraid of the old woman. Ba! old muff!”
His father sat on in silence and shivered. A faint light found its way
through a broad clink at the top, where the partition failed to meet
the ceiling by a quarter of an inch, and lay in bright patches upon his
high forehead, beneath which the deep cavities of his eyes showed
black.
In times gone by Ivan Savvich had been used to drink heavily, and then
his wife had feared and hated him. But when he had begun to develop
unmistakable signs of consumption, and could drink no longer, she took
to drink in her turn, and gradually accustomed herself to vodka. Then
she avenged herself for all she had suffered at the hands of that tall
narrow-chested man, who used incomprehensible words, had lost his place
through disobedience and drunkenness, and who brought home with him
just such long-haired, debauched and conceited fellows as himself.
In contradistinction to her husband, the more Feoktista Petrovna drank
the healthier she became, and the heavier became her fists. Now she
said what she pleased, brought men and women to the house just as she
chose, and sang with them noisy songs, while he lay silent behind the
partition huddled together with perpetual cold, and meditating on the
injustice and sorrow of human life. To every one, with whom she talked,
she complained that she had no such enemies in the world as her husband
and son, they were stuck-up statisticians!
For the space of an hour his mother kept drumming into Sashka’s ears:
“But I say you shall go,” punctuating each word with a heavy blow on
the table, which made the tumblers, placed on it after washing, jump
and rattle again.
“But I say I won’t!” Sashka coolly replied, dragging down the corners
of his mouth with the will to show his teeth—a habit which had earned
for him at school the nickname of Wolfkin.
“I’ll thrash you, won’t I just!” cried his mother.
“All right! thrash away!”
But Feoktista Petrovna knew that she could no longer strike her son now
that he had begun to retaliate by biting, and that if she drove him
into the street he would go off larking, and sooner get frost-bitten
than go to the Svetchnikovs, therefore she appealed to her husband’s
authority.
“Calls himself a father, and can’t protect the mother from insult!”
“Really, Sashka, go. Why are you so obstinate?” he jerked out from the
bench. “They will perhaps take you up again. They are kind people.”
Sashka only laughed in an insulting manner.
His father, long ago, before Sashka was born, had been tutor at the
Svetchnikovs’, and had ever since looked on them as the best people in
the world. At that time he had held also an appointment in the
statistical office of the _Zemstvo,_ and had not yet taken to drink.
Eventually he was compelled through his own fault to marry his
landlady’s daughter. From that time he severed his connection with the
Svetchnikovs, and took to drink. Indeed, he let himself go to such an
extent, that he was several times picked up drunk in the streets and
taken to the police station. But the Svetchnikovs did not cease to
assist him with money, and Feoktista Petrovna, although she hated them,
together with books and everything connected with her husband’s past,
still valued their acquaintance, and was in the habit of boasting of
it.
“Perhaps you might bring something for me too from the Christmas tree,”
continued his father. He was using craft to induce his son to go, and
Sashka knew it, and despised his father for his weakness and want of
straightforwardness; though he really did wish to bring back something
for the poor sickly old man, who had for a long time been without even
good tobacco.
“All right!” he blurted out; “give me my jacket. Have you put the
buttons on? No fear! I know you too well!”