“This is bad, young man, bad!” old Yanush used often to say, meeting me
in the street in Turkevich’s train or among Tiburtsi’s audience.
And as he said this the old man would wag his grey beard.
“This is bad, young man; you are in bad company. It is a pity, a very
great pity to see the son of such honourable parents among them.”
As a matter of fact, since my mother had died and my father’s gloomy
face had become even more sombre than before, I was very seldom seen
at home. I used to creep into the garden like a young wolf in the late
summer evenings, carefully avoid a meeting with my father, open my
window which was half-concealed by lilac bushes, and slip silently into
bed. If my little sister was not asleep in her cradle in the next room
I used to go in to see her, and we would softly kiss one another and
play together, taking care not to wake our grumbling old nurse.
In the morning, at break of day, while every one else in the house was
still asleep, I was already tracing a dewy pathway through the tall
grass of our garden, jumping across the fence, and making my way to the
pond where my madcap companions would be waiting for me with fishing
rods. Or else I would go down to the mill where the sleepy miller would
have opened the sluices a few moments before, and where the water, its
glassy surface delicately quivering, would already be plunging down the
mill-race, going bravely on its way to its daily toil.
The big mill-wheels, roused by the water’s noisy blows, would quiver
too and seem to yield unwillingly, as if loath to forego their sleep,
but next moment they would be turning, splashing the foam about, and
bathing themselves in the cold torrent.
Behind them the shafts would slowly begin to revolve; inside the mill
pinions would rattle, millstones would whirr, and a white floury dust
would rise in clouds through the cracks of the venerable building.
Then I would run on--I loved to meet Nature at her awakening. I was
glad when I succeeded in rousing a sleepy lark or in startling a
timid hare from its form. The dew-drops would be dripping from the
maiden-hair and from the faces of the meadow flowers as I crossed the
fields on my way to the woods beyond the town. The trees would greet me
with a drowsy murmur. The pale, surly faces of the prisoners would not
yet be peering from the windows of the gaol, and only the sentry would
be walking around its walls, noisily rattling his rifle as he relieved
the tired night-watchman.
Although I had made a long round, when I reached the town again I would
still meet sleepy figures here and there, opening the shutters of the
houses. But when the sun rose over the hill, a rackety bell would ring
out across the ponds calling the school-boys together, and hunger would
drive me home to my morning tea.
Every one called me a tramp and a young good-for-nothing, and I was on
the whole so often reproached with my many wicked tendencies, that at
last I came to be persuaded of them myself. My father believed in them
too, and sometimes made an effort to take my education in hand, but
these attempts invariably ended in failure. The sight of his stern,
melancholy face on which lay the harsh imprint of inconsolable grief
frightened me and drove me into myself. I would stand uneasily before
him, first on one foot and then on the other, glancing about me, and
plucking at my little breeches. Sometimes I seemed to feel something
rising in my breast; I wanted him to kiss me and take me on his knee. I
should then have nestled to his breast and perhaps we should have wept
together--the stern man and the child--at the thought of our common
loss. But he would look at me instead with dim eyes that seemed to be
staring at something over my head, and I would shrink under that gaze,
which was incomprehensible to me.
“Do you remember your mother?”
Did I remember her? Ah, yes, I remembered! I remembered how, in the
night, I used to awaken and, finding her soft arms in the darkness,
would nestle near them, covering them with kisses. I remembered her as
she had sat dying at the open window, gazing sorrowfully at the lovely
Spring landscape before her, bidding it farewell in the last year of
her life.
Ah, yes, I remembered her! As she lay beautiful, young, and covered
with flowers, but with the seal of death upon her pale face, I had
crouched in a corner like a young wild thing, staring at her with
burning eyes before which the whole awful riddle of life and death was
being unfolded. And at last, when a crowd of strangers had borne her
away, was it not my sobs that filled the house with low sounds of
weeping on the first night of my bereavement?
Ah yes, I remembered her! And still, in the silence of night, I would
awaken with my childish heart bursting with an overflowing love, a
smile of happiness on my lips, in blessed forgetfulness, wrapped in
the rosy dreams of childhood. And once more it seemed that she was
with me, and that at any moment I might feel again her gentle, loving
kiss. But my arms would reach out into the empty darkness, and again
the consciousness of my bitter loneliness would pierce my soul. Then
I would press my hands to my aching heart and scalding tears would
trickle down my cheeks.
Ah yes, I remembered her! But at the question of that tall, stern man
with whom I wished to feel a sense of kinship and could not, I would
wince more than ever, and quietly withdraw my little hand from his.
And he would turn away from me with anger and pain. He felt that he had
not the slightest influence over me, that an insurmountable barrier
stood between us. He had loved her too much while she was alive to
notice me in his happiness, and now his deep sorrow hid me from him.
So little by little the gulf dividing us grew ever wider and deeper. He
became more and more convinced that I was a wicked, worthless boy, with
a hard, selfish heart, and the feeling that he _should_ but could not
teach me; _should_ love me, but could not find a corner in his heart
to harbour this love, still more increased his dislike for me. And
this I felt. I used to watch him sometimes from where I stood hidden
behind the shrubbery. He would walk up and down the garden paths with
ever quickening footsteps, groaning with the unbearable agony in his
heart. My heart too would ache with sympathy and pity at the sight of
him. Once, when he took his head in his hands and sank down sobbing on
a bench, I could endure it no longer and ran out of the shrubbery into
the path, impelled by an undefinable impulse to be near him.
But he, roused from his gloomy and hopeless meditations, looked at me
sternly and checked me with the cold question:
“What do you want?”
I did not want anything. I turned quickly away, ashamed of my outburst,
afraid lest my father should read it in my blushing face. I ran into
the grove in the garden and falling on my face in the grass wept
bitterly from vexation and pain.
At six years I had already experienced all the horrors of loneliness.
My sister Sonia was four. I loved her passionately and she returned my
love, but the general, fixed opinion that I was an out-and-out little
rascal at last succeeded in raising a high barrier between us. Whenever
I began to play with her in my noisy, frolicsome way, our old nurse,
always sleepy and always picking over hen feathers for pillows with
closed eyes, would wake up in an instant, swiftly seize my Sonia, and
carry her away, throwing an angry glance at me. At such times she
always reminded me of a ruffled brood-hen, while I likened myself to
a marauding hawk, and Sonia to a little chicken. I would be hurt and
vexed. It was no wonder, then, that I soon abandoned all attempts to
amuse Sonia with my objectionable games, and in a little while both our
house and the little garden began to grow irksome to me, for I found
there neither welcome nor kindness. I began to roam. My whole being
was quivering with strange presentiments; a foretaste, as it were, of
life. It seemed to me that I should surely find something somewhere
out there, in that great, unknown world beyond the old walled garden;
I felt as if I should and would do something, only I knew not what,
and from the bottom of my soul a feeling that tempted me and teased me
rose up to meet this mystery. I was constantly awaiting the solution of
these riddles, and instinctively fled from our nurse and her feathers,
from the familiar, lazy whispering of the apple trees in our little
garden, and from the silly knife-blows that resounded whenever meat
was being chopped in our kitchen. From then on the epithets of “street
urchin” and “tramp” were added to my other unflattering appellations.
But I paid no heed to this; I had grown accustomed to reproaches, and
endured them as I endured sudden downpours of rain and the fierce heat
of the sun. I listened scowling to all rebukes and went my own way.
Wandering through the streets, I watched the life of the town with
childishly inquiring eyes; I listened to the rumbling of the wagons on
the highway and tried to catch the echoes of great far-away cities,
either in the clatter of their wheels or in the whispering of the wind
among the tall Cossack tombs by the roadside. More than once did my
eyes open wide with fear, more than once did my heart stop beating
at the panorama of life unfolding before me, picture after picture,
impression after impression, each leaving a vivid imprint on my heart.
I saw and knew a great deal that children much older than myself
ordinarily never see, and all the while that unexplained something
which had risen from the depths of my childish soul called to me as
before, ceaseless, mysterious, vibrant.
After the shrews of the castle had deprived the old building of my
respect and admiration, and when every corner of the town had become
familiar to me down to the last filthy alley, then I began to turn my
eyes into the distance, toward the hill on which the dissenting chapel
stood. At first I approached it from one side and then from another
like a timid animal, not daring to climb a hill that had such an evil
reputation. But as I gradually grew more familiar with the place, I
began to see before me only peaceful graves and fallen crosses. Nowhere
were there any visible signs of life or of the presence of human
beings. It lay quiet, deserted and alone. Only the chapel frowned at
me with its empty windows, as if absorbed in melancholy meditation. I
longed to inspect the building from every point of view, to look inside
it, and so to make sure that there was nothing in it but dust. But it
was both terrifying and inconvenient to undertake such an expedition
alone, and so I enlisted a small army of three scape-graces, urchins
who were attracted to the adventure by the promise of cakes and of
apples from our garden.