Kostrom at once asked spitefully:

"But for two greven—you would be afraid?" Then he said to Valek: "Give him the ruble. But he won't go; he is only making believe."

"Well, take the ruble."

Tchurka rose, and, without saying a word and without hurrying, went away, keeping close to the fence. Kostrom, putting his fingers in his mouth, whistled piercingly after him.; but Ludmilla said uneasily:

"O Lord, what a braggart he is! I never!"

"Where are you going, coward?" jeered Valek. "And you call yourself the first fighter in the street!" It was offensive to listen to his jeers. We did not like this overfed youth; he was always putting up little boys to do wrong, told them obscene stories of girls and women, and taught them to tease them. The children did what he told them, and suffered dearly for it. For some reason or other he hated my dog, and used to throw stones at it, and one day gave it some bread with a needle in it. But it was still more offensive to see Tchurka going away, shrinking and ashamed.

I said to Valek:

"Give me the ruble, and I will go."

Mocking me and trying to frighten me, he held out the ruble to Ludmilla's mother, who would not take it, and said sternly:

"I don't want it, and I won't have it!" Then she went out angrily.

Ludmilla also could not make up her mind to take the money, and this made Valek jeer the more. I was going away without obtaining the money when grandmother came along" and, being told all about it, took the ruble, saying to me softly:

"Put on your overcoat and take a blanket with you, for it grows cold toward morning."

Her words raised my hopes that nothing terrible would happen to me.

Valek laid it down on a condition that I should either lie or sit on the coffin until it was light, not leaving it, whatever happened, even if the coffin shook when the old man Kalinin began to climb out of the tomb. If I jumped to the ground I had lost.

"And remember," said Valek, "that I shall be watching you all night."

When I set out for the cemetery grandmother made the sign of the cross over me and kissed me.

"If you should see a glimpse of anything, don't move, but just say, 'Hail, Mary.'"

I went along quickly, my one desire being to begin and finish the whole thing. Valek, Kostrom, and another youth escorted me thither. As I was getting over the brick wall I got mixed up in the blanket, and fell down, but was up in the same moment, as if the earth had ejected me. There was a chuckle from the other side of the wall. My heart contracted; a cold chill ran down my back.

I went stumblingly on to the black coffin, against one side of which the sand had drifted, while on the other side could be seen the short, thick legs. It looked as if some one had tried to lift it up, and had succeeded only in making it totter. I sat on the edge of the coffin and looked around. The hilly cemetery was simply packed with gray crosses; quivering shadows fell upon the graves.

Here and there, scattered among the graves, slender willows stood up, uniting adjoining graves with their branches. Through the lace-work of their shadows blades of grass stuck up.

The church rose up in the sky like a snow-drift, and in the motionless clouds shone the small setting moon.

The father of Yaz, "the good-for-nothing peasant," was lazily ringing his bell in his lodge. Each time, as he pulled the string, it caught in the iron plate of the roof and squeaked pitifully, after which could be heard the metallic clang of the little bell. It sounded sharp and sorrowful.

"God give us rest!" I remembered the saying of the watchman. It was very painful and somehow it was suffocating. I was perspiring freely although the night was cool. Should I have time to run into the watchman's lodge if old Kalinin really did try to creep out of his grave?

I was well acquainted with the cemetery. I had played among the graves many times with Yaz and other comrades. Over there by the church my mother was buried.

Every one was not asleep yet, for snatches of laughter and fragments of songs were borne to me from the village. Either on the railway embankment, to which they were carrying sand, or in the village of Katizovka a harmonica gave forth a strangled sound. Along the wall, as usual, went the drunken blacksmith Myachov, singing. I recognized him by his song:

"To our mother's door
One small sin we lay.
The only one she loves
Is our Papasha."

It was pleasant to listen to the last sighs of life, but at each stroke of the bell it became quieter, and the quietness overflowed like a river over a meadow, drowning and hiding everything. One's soul seemed to float in boundless and unfathomable space, to be extinguished like the light of a catch in the darkness, becoming dissolved without leaving a trace in that ocean of space in which live only the unattainable stars, shining brightly, while everything on earth disappears as being useless and dead. Wrapping myself in the blanket, I sat on the coffin, with my feet tucked under me and my face to the church. Whenever I moved, the coffin squeaked, and the sand under it crunched.

Something twice struck the ground close to me, and then a piece of brick fell near by. I was frightened, but then I guessed that Valek and his friends were throwing things at me from the other side of the wall, trying to scare me. But I felt all the better for the proximity of human creatures.

I began unwillingly to think of my mother. Once she had found me trying to smoke a cigarette. She began to beat me, but I said:

"Don't touch me; I feel bad enough without that. I feel very sick."

Afterward, when I was put behind the stove as a punishment, she said to grandmother:

"That boy has no feeling; he does n't love any one." It hurt me to hear that. When my mother punished me I was sorry for her. I felt uncomfortable for her sake, because she seldom punished me deservedly or justly. On the whole, I had received a great deal of ill treatment in my life. Those people on the other side of the fence, for example, must know that I was frightened of being alone in the cemetery, yet they wanted to frighten me more. Why?

I should like to have shouted to them, "Go to the devil!" but that might have been disastrous. Who knew what the devil would think of it, for no doubt he was somewhere near? There was a lot of mica in the sand, and it gleamed faintly in the moonlight, which reminded me how, lying one day on a raft on the Oka, gazing into the water, a bream suddenly swam almost in my face, turned on its side, looking like a human cheek, and, looking at me with its round, bird-like eyes, dived to the bottom, fluttering like a leaf falling from a maple-tree.

My memory worked with increasing effort, recalling different episodes of my life, as if it were striving to protect itself against the imaginations evoked by terror.

A hedgehog came rolling along, tapping on the sand with its strong paws. It reminded me of a hobgoblin; it was just as little and as disheveled-looking.

I remembered how grandmother, squatting down beside the stove, said, "Kind master of the house, take away the beetles."

Far away over the town, which I could not see, it grew lighter. The cold morning air blew against my cheeks and into my eyes. I wrapped myself in my blanket. Let come what would!

Grandmother awoke me. Standing beside me and pulling off the blanket, she said:

"Get up! Aren't you chilled? Well, were you frightened?"

"I was frightened, but don't tell any one; don't tell the other boys."

"But why not?" she asked in amazement. "If you were not afraid, you have nothing to be proud about."

As he went home she said to me gently:

"You have to experience things for yourself in this world, dear heart. If you can't teach yourself, no one else can teach you."

By the evening I was the "hero" of the street, and every one asked me, "Is it possible that you were not afraid?" And when I answered, "I was afraid," they shook their heads and exclaimed, "Aha! you see!"

The shopkeeper went about saying loudly:

"It may be that they talked nonsense when they said that Kalinin walked. But if he did, do you think he would have frightened that boy? No, he would have driven him out of the cemetery, and no one would know where he went."

Ludmilla looked at me with tender astonishment. Even grandfather was obviously pleased with me. They all made much of me. Only Tchurka said gruffly:

"It was easy enough for him; his grandmother is a witch!"

CHAPTER III

Imperceptibly, like a little star at dawn, my brother Kolia faded away. Grandmother, he, and I slept in a small shed on planks covered with various rags. On the other side of the chinky wall of the outhouse was the family poultry-house. We could hear the sleepy, overfed fowls fluttering and clucking in the evening, and the golden, shrill-voiced cock awoke us in the morning.

"Oh, I should like to tear you to pieces!" grandmother would grumble when they woke her.

I was already awake, watching the sunbeams falling through the chinks upon my bed, and the silver specks of dust which danced in them. These little specks seemed to me just like the words in a fairy-tale. Mice had gnawed the planks, and red beetles with black spots ran about there.

Sometimes, to escape from the stifling fumes which arose from the soil in the fowl-house, I crept out of the wooden hut, climbed to the roof, and watched the people of the house waking up, eyeless, large, and swollen with sleep. Here appeared the hairy noddle of the boatman Phermanov, a surly drunkard, who gazed at the sun with blear, running eyes and grunted like a bear. Then grandfather came hurrying out into the yard and hastened to the wash-house to wash himself in cold water. The garrulous cook of the landlord, a sharp-nosed woman, thickly covered with freckles, was like a cuckoo. The landlord himself was like an old fat dove. In fact, they were all like some bird, animal, or wild beast.

Although the morning was so pleasant and bright, it made me feel sad, and I wanted to get away into the fields where no one came, for I had already learned that human creatures always spoil a bright day.

One day when I was lying on the roof grandmother called me, and said in a low voice, shaking her head as she lay on her bed:

"Kolia is dead."

The little boy had slipped from the pillow, and lay livid, lanky on the felt cover. His night-shirt had worked itself up round his neck, leaving bare his swollen stomach and crooked legs. His hands were curiously folded behind his back, as if he had been trying to lift himself up. His head was bent on one side.

"Thank God he has gone!" said grandmother as she did her hair. "What would have become of the poor little wretch had he lived?"

Treading almost as if he were dancing, grandfather made his appearance, and cautiously touched the closed eyes of the child with his fingers.

Grandmother asked him angrily:

"What do you mean by touching him with unwashen hands?"

He muttered:

"There you are! He gets born, lives, and eats, and all for nothing."

"You are half asleep," grandmother cut him short.

He looked at her vacantly, and went out in the yard, saying:

"I am not going to give him a funeral; you can do what you like about it."

"Phoo! you miserable creature!"

I went out, and did not return until it was close upon evening. They buried Kolia on the morning of the following day, and during the mass I sat by the reopened grave with my dog and Yaz's father. He had dug the grave cheaply, and kept praising himself for it before my face.

"I have only done this out of friendship; for any one else I should have charged so many rubles."

Looking into the yellow pit, from which arose a heavy odor, I saw some moist black planks at one side. At my slightest movement the heaps of sand around the grave fell to the bottom in a thin stream, leaving wrinkles in the sides. I moved on purpose, so that the sand would hide those boards.

"No larks now!" said Yaz's father, as he smoked.

Grandmother carried out the little coffin. The "trashy peasant" sprang into the hole, took the coffin from her, placed it beside the black boards, and, jumping out of the grave, began to hurl the earth into it with his feet and his spade. Grandfather and grandmother also helped him in silence. There were neither priests nor beggars there; only we four amid a dense crowd of crosses. As she gave the sexton his money, grandmother said reproachfully:

"But you have disturbed Varina's coffin."

"What else could I do? If I had not done that, I should have had to take some one else's piece of ground. But there's nothing to worry about."

Grandmother prostrated herself on the grave, sobbed and groaned, and went away, followed by grandfather, his eyes hidden by the peak of his cap, clutching at his worn coat.

"They have sown the seed in unplowed ground," he said suddenly, running along in front, just like a crow on the plowed field.

"What does he mean?" I asked grandmother. "God bless him! He has his thoughts," she answered.

It was hot. Grandmother went heavily; her feet sank in the warm sand. She halted frequently, mopping her perspiring face with her handkerchief.

"That black thing in the grave," I asked her, "was it mother's coffin?"

"Yes," she said angrily. "Ignorant dog! It is not a year yet, and our Varia is already decayed! It is the sand that has done it; it lets the water through. If that had to happen, it would have been better to—" "Shall we all decay?"

"All. Only the saints escape it."

"You—you will not decay!"

She halted, set my cap straight, and said to me seriously:

"Don't think about it; it is better not. Do you hear?"

But I did think of it. How offensive and revolting death was! How odious! I felt very badly about it.

When we reached home grandfather had already prepared the samovar and laid the table.

"Come and have some tea. I expect you are hot," he said. "I have put in my own tea as well. This is for us all."

He went to grandmother and patted her on the shoulder.

"Well, Mother, well?"

Grandmother held up her hands.

"Whatever does it all mean?"

"This is what it means: God is angry with us; He is tearing everything away from us bit by bit. If families lived together in unity, like fingers on a hand—"

It was long since he had spoken so gently and peaceably. I listened, hoping that the old man would extinguish my sense of injury, and help me to forget the yellow pit and the black moist boards in protuberance in its side. But grandmother cut him short harshly:

"Leave off, Father! You have been uttering words like that all your life, and I should like to know who is the better for them? All your life you have eaten into every one as rust corrodes iron."

Grandfather muttered, looked at her, and held his tongue.

In the evening, at the gate, I told Ludmilla sorrowfully about what I had seen in the morning, but it did not seem to make much impression on her.

"Orphans are better off. If my father and mother were to die, I should leave my sister to look after my brother, and I myself would go into a convent for the rest of my life. Where else should I go? I don't expect to get married, being lame and unable to work. Besides, I might bring crippled children into the world."

She spoke wisely, like all the women of our street, and it must have been from that evening that I lost interest in her. In fact, my life took a turn which caused me to see her very seldom.

A few days after the death of my brother, grandfather said to me:

"Go to bed early this evening, while it is still light, and I will call you. We will go into the forest and get some logs."

"And I will come and gather herbs," declared grandmother.

The forest of fir- and birch-trees stood on a marsh about three versts distant from the village. Abounding in withered and fallen trees, it stretched in one direction to the Oka, and in the other to the high road to Moscow. Beyond it, with its soft, black bristles looking like a black tent, rose the fir-thicket on the "Ridge of Savelov."

All this property belonged to Count Shuvalov, and was badly guarded. The inhabitants of Kunavin regarded it as their own, carried away the fallen trees and cut off the dried wood, and on occasion were not squeamish about cutting down living trees. In the autumn, when they were laying in a stock of wood for the winter, people used to steal out here by the dozen, with hatchets and ropes on their backs.

And so we three went out at dawn over the silver-green, dewy fields. On our left, beyond the Oka, above the ruddy sides of the Hill of Dyatlov, above white Nijni-Novgorod, on the hillocks in the gardens, on the golden domes of churches, rose the lazy Russian sun in its leisurely manner. A gentle wind blew sleepily from the turbid Oka; the golden buttercups, bowed down by the dew, sway to and fro; lilac-colored bells bowed dumbly to the earth; everlasting flowers of different colors stuck up dryly in the barren turf; the blood-red blossoms of the flower called "night beauty" opened like stars. The woods came to meet us like a dark army; the fir-trees spread out their wings like large birds; the birches looked like maidens. The acrid smell of the marshes flowed over the fields. My dog ran beside me with his pink tongue hanging out, often halting and snuffing the air, and shaking his foxlike head, as if in perplexity. Grandfather, in grandmother's short coat and an old peakless cap, blinking and smiling at something or other, walked as cautiously as if he were bent on stealing. Grandmother, wearing a blue blouse, a black skirt, and a white handkerchief about her head, waddled comfortably. It was difficult to hurry when walking behind her.

The nearer we came to the forest, the more animated grandfather became. Walking with his nose in the air and muttering, he began to speak, at first disjointedly and inarticulately, and afterward happily and beautifully, almost as if he had been drinking.

"The forests are the Lord's gardens. No one planted them save the wind of God and the holy breath of His mouth. When I was working on the boats in my youth I went to Jegoulya. Oh, Lexei, you will never have the experiences I have had! There are forests along the Oka, from Kasimov to Mouron, and there are forests on the Volga, too, stretching as far as the Urals. Yes; it is all so boundless and wonderful."

Grandmother looked at him askance, and winked at me, and he, stumbling over the hillocks, let fall some disjointed, dry words that have remained forever fixed in my memory.

"We were taking some empty oil-casks from Saratov to Makara on the Yamarka, and we had with us as skipper Kyril of Poreshka. The mate was a Tatar—Asaph, or some such name. When we reached Jegulia the wind was right in our faces, blowing with all its force; and as it remained in the same quarter and tossed us about, we went on shore to cook some food for ourselves. It was Maytime. The sea lay smooth around the land, and the waves just floated on her? like a flock of birds—like thousands of swans which sport on the Caspian Sea. The hills of Jegulia are green in the springtime; the sun floods the earth with gold. We rested; we became friendly; we seemed to be drawn to one another. It was gray and cold on the river, but on shore it was warm and fragrant. At eventide our Kyril—he was a harsh man and well on in years—stood up, took off his cap, and said: 'Well, children, I am no longer either chief or servant. Go away by yourselves, and I will go to the forest.' We were all startled. What was it that he was saying? We ought not to be left without some one responsible to be master. You see, people can't get on without a head, although it is only on the Volga, which is like a straight road. It is possible to lose one's way, for people alone are only like a senseless beast, and who cares what becomes of them? We were frightened; but he—he had made up his mind. I have no desire to go on living as your shepherd; I am going into the forest.' Some of us had half a mind to seize and keep him by force, but the others said, 'Wait!' Then the Tatar mate set up a cry: I shall go, too!' It was very bad luck. The Tatar had not been paid by the proprietors for the last two journeys; in fact, he had done half of a third one without pay, and that was a lot of money to lose in those days. We wrangled over the matter until night, and then seven of our company left us, leaving only sixteen or fourteen of us. That's what your forests do for people!"

"Did they go and join the brigands?"

"Maybe, or they may have become hermits. We did not inquire into the matter then."

Grandmother crossed herself.

"Holy Mother of God! When one thinks of people, one cannot help being sorry for them."

"We are all given the same powers of reason, you know, where the devil draws."

We entered the forest by a wet path between marshy hillocks and frail fir-trees. I thought that it must be lovely to go and live in the woods as Kyril of Poreshka had done. There are no chattering human creatures there, no fights or drunkenness. There I should be able to forget the repulsive greediness of grandfather and mother's sandy grave, all of which things hurt me, and weighed on my heart with an oppressive heaviness. When we came to a dry place grandmother said:

"We must have a snack now. Sit down."

In her basket there were rye bread, onions, cucumbers, salt, and curds wrapped in a cloth. Grandfather looked at all this in confusion and blinked.

"But I did not bring anything to eat, good Mother."

"There is enough for us all."

We sat down, leaning against the mast-like trunk of a fir-tree. The air was laden with a resinous odor; from the fields blew a gentle wind; the shave-grass waved to and fro. Grandmother plucked the herbs with her dark hands, and told me about the medicinal properties of St. John's-wort, betony, and rib-wort, and of the secret power of bracken. Grandfather hewed the fallen trees in pieces, and it was my part to carry the logs and put them all in one place; but I stole away unnoticed into the thicket after grandmother. She looked as if she were floating among the stout, hardy tree-trunks, and as if she were diving when she stooped to the earth, which was strewn with fir-cones. She talked to herself as she went along.

"We have come too early again. There will be hardly any mushrooms. Lord, how badly Thou lookest after the poor! Mushrooms are the treat of the poor."

I followed her silently and cautiously, not to attract her attention. I did not wish to interrupt her conversation with God, the herbs, and the frogs. But she saw me.

"Have you run away from grandfather?" And stooping to the black earth, splendidly decked in flowered vestments, she spoke of the time when God, enraged with mankind, flooded the earth with water and drowned all living creatures. "But the sweet Mother of God had beforehand collected the seeds of everything in a basket and hidden them, and when it was all over, she begged the sun: 'Dry the earth from end to end, and then will all the people sing thy praises.' The sun dried the earth, and she sowed the seed. God looked. Once more the earth was covered with living creatures, herbs, cattle, and people. 'Who has done this against My will?' He asked. And here she confessed, and as God had been sorry Himself to see the earth bare, He said to her, 'You have done well.'"

I liked this story, but it surprised me, and I said very gravely:

"But was that really so? The Mother of God was born long after the flood."

It was now grandmother's turn to be surprised.

"Who told you that?"

"It was written in the books at school."

This reassured her, and she gave me the advice:

"Put all that aside; forget it. It is only out of books; they are lies, those books." And laughing softly, gayly, "Think for a moment, silly! God was; and His Mother was not? Then of whom was He born?"

"I don't know."

"Good! You have learned enough to be able to say 'I don't know.'"

"The priest said that the Mother of God was born of Joachim and Anna."

Then grandmother was angry. She faced about, and looked sternly into my eyes.

"If that is what you think, I will slap you." But in the course of a few minutes she explained to me. "The Blessed Virgin always existed before any one and anything. Of Her was God born, and then—"

"And Christ, what about Him?"

Grandmother was silent, shutting her eyes in her confusion.

"And what about Christ? Eh? eh?"

I saw that I was victor, that I had caused the divine mysteries to be a snare to her, and it was not a pleasant thought.

We went farther and farther into the forest, into the dark-blue haze pierced by the golden rays of the sun. There was a peculiar murmur, dreamy, and arousing dreams. The crossbill chirped, the titmouses uttered their bell-like notes, the goldfinch piped, the cuckoo laughed, the jealous song of the chaffinch was heard unceasingly, and that strange bird, the hawfinch, sang pensively. Emerald-green frogs hopped around our feet; among the roots, guarding them, lay an adder, with his golden head raised; the squirrel cracked nuts, his furry tail peeping out among the fir-trees. The deeper one went into the forest, the more one saw.

Among the trunks of the fir-trees appeared transparent, aërial figures of gigantic people, which disappeared into the green mass through which the blue and silver sky shone. Under one's feet there was a splendid carpet of moss, sown with red bilberries, and moor-berries shone in the grass like drops of blood. Mushrooms tantalized one with their strong smell.

"Holy Virgin, bright earthly light," prayed grandmother, drawing a deep breath.

In the forest she was like the mistress of a house with all her family round her. She ambled along like a bear, seeing and praising everything and giving thanks. It seemed as if a certain warmth flowed from her through the forest, and when the moss, crushed by her feet, raised itself and stood up in her wake, it was peculiarly pleasing to me to see it.

As I walked along I thought how nice it would be to be a brigand; to rob the greedy and give the spoil to the poor; to make them all happy and satisfied, neither envying nor scolding one another, like bad-tempered curs. It was good to go thus to grandmother's God, to her Holy Virgin, and tell them all the truth about the bad lives people led, and how clumsily and offensively they buried one another in rubbishy sand. And there was so much that was unnecessarily repulsive and torturing on earth! If the Holy Virgin believed what I said, let her give me such an intelligence as would enable me to construct everything differently and improve the condition of things. It did not matter about my not being grown-up. Christ had been only a year older than I was when the wise men listened to Him.

Once in my preoccupation I fell into a deep pit, hurting my side and grazing the back of my neck. Sitting at the bottom of this pit in the cold mud, which was as sticky as resin, I realized with a feeling of intense humiliation that I should not be able to get out by myself, and I did not like the idea of frightening grandmother by calling out. However, I had to call her in the end. She soon dragged me out, and, crossing herself, said:

"The Lord be praised! It is a lucky thing that the bear's pit was empty. What would have happened to you if the master of the house had been lying there?" And she cried through her laughter.

Then she took me to the brook, washed my wounds and tied them up with strips of her chemise, after laying some healing leaves upon them, and took me into the railway signal-box, for I had not the strength to get all the way home.

And so it happened that almost every day I said to grandmother:

"Let us go into the forest."

She used to agree willingly, and thus we lived all the summer and far into the autumn, gathering herbs, berries, mushrooms, and nuts. Grandmother sold what we gathered, and by this means we were able to keep ourselves.

"Lazy beggars!" shrieked grandfather, though we never had food from him.

The forest called up a feeling of peace and solace in my heart, and in that feeling all my griefs were swallowed up, and all that was unpleasant was obliterated. During that time also my senses acquired a peculiar keenness, my hearing and sight became more acute, my memory more retentive, my storehouse of impressions widened.

And the more I saw of grandmother, the more she amazed me. I had been accustomed to regard her as a higher being, as the very best and the wisest creature upon the earth, and she was continually strengthening this conviction. For instance, one evening we had been gathering white mushrooms, and when we arrived at the edge of the forest on our way home grandmother sat down to rest while I went behind the tree to see if there were any more mushrooms. Suddenly I heard her voice, and this is what I saw: she was seated by the footpath calmly putting away the root of a mushroom, while near her, with his tongue hanging out, stood a gray, emaciated dog.

"You go away now! Go away!" said grandmother. "Go, and God be with you!"

Not long before that Valek had poisoned my dog, and I wanted very much to have this one. I ran to the path. The dog hunched himself strangely without moving his neck, and, looking at me with his green, hungry eyes, leaped into the forest, with his tail between his legs. His movements were not those of a dog, and when I whistled, he hurled himself wildly into the bushes.

"You saw?" said grandmother, smiling. "At first I was deceived. I thought it was a dog. I looked again and saw that I was mistaken. He had the fangs of a wolf, and the neck, too. I was quite frightened. 'Well,' I said, 'if you are a wolf, take yourself off!' It is a good thing that wolves are not dangerous in the summer."

She was never afraid in the forest, and always found her way home unerringly. By the smell of the grass she knew what kind of mushrooms ought to be found in such and such a place, what sort in another, and often examined me in the subject.

"What sort of trees do this and that fungus love? How do you distinguish the edible from the poisonous?"

By hardly visible scratches on the bark of a tree she showed me where the squirrel had made his home in a hollow, and I would climb up and ravage the nest of the animal, robbing him of his winter store of nuts. Sometimes there were as many as ten pounds in one nest. And one day, when I was thus engaged, a hunter planted twenty-seven shot in the right side of my body. Grandmother got eleven of them out with a needle, but the rest remained under my skin for many years, coming out by degrees.

Grandmother was pleased with me for bearing pain patiently.

"Brave boy!" she praised me. "He who is most patient will be the cleverest."

Whenever she had saved a little money from the sale of mushrooms and nuts, she used to lay it on window-sills as "secret alms," and she herself went about in rags and patches even on Sundays.

"You go about worse than a beggar. You put me to shame," grumbled grandfather.

"What does it matter to you? I am not your daughter. I am not looking for a husband."

Their quarrels had become more frequent.

"I am not more sinful than others," cried grandfather in injured tones, "but my punishment is greater."

Grandmother used to tease him.

"The devils know what every one is worth." And she would say to me privately: "My old man is frightened of devils. See how quickly he is aging! It is all from fear; eh, poor man!"

I had become very hardy during the summer, and quite savage through living in the forest, and I had lost all interest in the life of my contemporaries, such as Ludmilla. She seemed to me to be tiresomely sensible.

One day grandfather returned from the town very wet. It was autumn, and the rains were falling. Shaking himself on the threshold like a sparrow, he said triumphantly:

"Well, young rascal, you are going to a new situation to-morrow."

"Where now?" asked grandmother, angrily.

"To your sister Matrena, to her son."

"O Father, you have done very wrong."

"Hold your tongue, fool! They will make a man of him."

Grandmother let her head droop and said nothing more.

In the evening I told Ludmilla that I was going to live in the town.

"They are going to take me there soon," she informed me, thoughtfully. "Papa wants my leg to be taken off altogether. Without it I should get well."

She had grown very thin during the summer; the skin of her face had assumed a bluish tint, and her eyes had grown larger.

"Are you afraid?" I asked her.

"Yes," she replied, and wept silently.

I had no means of consoling her, for I was frightened myself at the prospect of life in town. We sat for a long time in painful silence, pressed close against each other. If it had been summer, I should have asked grandmother to come begging with me, as she had done when she was a girl. We might have taken Ludmilla with us; I could have drawn her along in a little cart. But it was autumn. A damp wind blew up the streets, the sky was heavy with rain-clouds, the earth frowned. It had begun to look dirty and unhappy.

CHAPTER IV

Once more I was in the town, in a two-storied white house which reminded me of a coffin meant to hold a lot of people. It was a new house, but it looked as if were in ill health, and was bloated like a beggar who has suddenly become rich and has overeaten. It stood sidewise to the street, and had eight windows to each floor, but where the face of the house ought to have been there were only four windows. The lower windows looked on a narrow passage and on the yard, and the upper windows on the laundress's little house and the causeway.

No street, as I understood the term, existed. In front of the house a dirty causeway ran in two directions, cut in two by a narrow dike. To the left, it extended to the House of Detention, and was heaped with rubbish and logs, and at the bottom stood a thick pool of dark-green filth. On the right, at the end of the causeway, the slimy Xvyexdin Pond stagnated. The middle of the causeway was exactly opposite the house, and half of it was strewn with filth and overgrown with nettles and horse sorrel, while in the other half the priest Doriedont Pokrovski had planted a garden in which was a summer-house of thin lathes painted red. If one threw stones at it, the lathes split with a crackling sound.

The place was intolerably depressing and shamelessly dirty. The autumn had ruthlessly broken up the filthy, rotten earth, changing it into a sort of red resin which clung to one's feet tenaciously. I had never seen so much dirt in so small a space before, and after being accustomed to the cleanliness of the fields and forests, this corner of the town aroused my disgust.

Beyond the causeway stretched gray, broken-down fences, and in the distance I recognized the little house in which I had lived when I was shop-boy. The nearness of that house depressed me still more. I had known my master before; he and his brother used to be among mother's visitors. His brother it was who had sung so comically:

"Andrei—papa, Andrei—papa—"

They were not changed. The elder, with a hook nose and long hair, was pleasant in manner and seemed to be kind; the younger, Victor, had the same horse-like face and the same freckles. Their mother, grandmother's sister, was very cross and fault-finding. The elder son was married. His wife was a splendid creature, white like bread made from Indian corn, with very large, dark eyes. She said to me twice during the first day:

"I gave your mother a silk cloak trimmed with jet."

Somehow I did not want to believe that she had given, and that my mother had accepted, a present. When she reminded me of it again, I said:

"You gave it to her, and that is the end of the matter; there is nothing to boast about."

She started away from me.

"Wh-a-at? To whom are you speaking?"

Her face came out in red blotches, her eyes rolled, and she called her husband.

He came into the kitchen, with his compasses in his hand and a pencil behind his ear, listened to what his wife had to say, and then said to me:

"You must speak properly to her and to us all. There must be no insolence." Then he said to his wife, impatiently, "Don't disturb me with your nonsense!"

"What do you mean—nonsense? If your relatives—"

"The devil take my relatives!" cried the master, rushing away.

I myself was not pleased to think that they were relatives of grandmother. Experience had taught me that relatives behave worse to one another than do strangers. Their gossip is more spiteful, since they know more of the bad and ridiculous sides of one another than strangers, and they fall out and fight more often.

I liked my master. He used to shake back his hair with a graceful movement, and tuck it behind his ears, and he reminded me somehow of "Good Business." He often laughed merrily; his gray eyes looked kindly upon me, and funny wrinkles played divertingly about his aquiline nose.

"You have abused each other long enough, wild fowl," he would say to his mother and his wife, showing his small, closely set teeth in a gentle smile.

The mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law abused each other all day. I was surprised to see how swiftly and easily they plunged into a quarrel. The first thing in the morning, with their hair unbrushed and their clothes unfastened, they would rush about the rooms as if the house were on fire, and they fussed about all day, only pausing to take breath in the dining-room at dinner, tea, or supper. They ate and drank till they could eat and drink no more, and at dinner they talked about the food and disputed lethargically, preparing for a big quarrel. No matter what it was that the mother-in-law had prepared, the daughter-in-law was sure to say:

"My mother did not cook it this way."

"Well, if that is so, she did it badly, that's all." "On the contrary, she did it better."

"Well, you had better go back to your mother."

"I am mistress here."

"And who am I?"

Here the master would intervene.

"That will do, wild fowl! What is the matter with you? Are you mad?"

For some inexplicable reason everything about that house was peculiar and mirth-provoking. The way from the kitchen to the dining-room lay through a small closet, the only one in the house, through which they carried the samovar and the food into the dining-room. It was the cause of merry witticisms and often of laughable misunderstandings. I slept in the kitchen, between that door and the one leading to the stairs. My head was hot from the heat of the cooking-stove, but the draft from the stairs blew on my feet. When I retired to bed, I used to take all the mats off the floor and wrap them round my feet.

The large reception-room, with its two pier-glasses, its pictures in gilt frames, its pair of card-tables, and its dozen Vienna chairs, was a dreary, depressing place. The small drawing-room was simply packed with a medley of soft furniture, with wedding presents, silver articles, and a tea-service. It was adorned with three lamps, one larger than the other two.

In the dark, windowless bedroom, in addition to the wide bed, there were trunks and cupboards from which came the odors of leaf tobacco and Persian camomile. These three rooms were always unoccupied, while the entire household squeezed itself into the little dining-room. Directly after breakfast, at eight o'clock, the master and his brother moved the table, and, laying sheets of white paper upon it, with cases, pencils, and saucers containing Indian ink, set to work, one at each end of the table. The table was shaky, and took up nearly the whole of the room, and when the mistress and the nurse came out of the nursery they had to brush past the corners.

"Don't come fussing about here!" Victor would cry.

"Vassia, please tell him not to shout at me," the mistress would say to her husband in an offended tone.

"All right; but don't come and shake the table," her husband would reply peaceably.

"I am stout, and the room is so small."

"Well, we will go and work in the large drawingroom."

But at that she cried indignantly:

"Lord! why on earth should you work in the large drawing-room?"

At the door of the closet appeared the angry face of Matrena Ivanovna, flushed with the heat of the stove. She called out:

"You see how it is, Vassia? She knows that you are working, and yet she can't be satisfied with the other four rooms."

Victor laughed maliciously, but the master said: "That will do!"

And the daughter-in-law, with a venomously eloquent gesture, sank into a chair and groaned:

"I am dying! I am dying!"

"Don't hinder my work, the devil take you!" roared the master, turning pale with the exertion. "This is nothing better than a mad-house. Here am I breaking my back to feed you. Oh, you wild fowl!"

At first these quarrels used to alarm me, especially when the mistress, seizing a table knife, rushed into the closet, and, shutting both the doors, began to shriek like a mad thing. For a minute the house was quiet, then the master, having tried to force the door, stooped down, and called out to me:

"Climb up on my back and unfasten the hook."

I swiftly jumped on his back, and broke the pane of glass over the door; but when I bent down, the mistress hit me over the head with the blade of the knife. However, I succeeded in opening the door, and the master, dragging his wife into the dining-room after a struggle, took the knife away from her. As I sat in the kitchen rubbing my bruised head, I soon came to the conclusion that I had suffered for nothing. The knife was so blunt that it would hardly cut a piece of bread, and it would certainly never have made an incision in any one's skin. Besides, there had been no need for me to climb on the master's back. I could have broken the glass by standing on a chair, and in any case it would have been easier for a grown person to have unfastened the hook, since his arms would have been longer. After that episode the quarrels in the house ceased to alarm me.

The brothers used to sing in the church choir; sometimes they used to sing softly over their work. The elder would begin in a baritone:

"The ring, which was the maiden's heart,
I cast from me into the sea."

And the younger would join with his tenor:

"And I with that very ring
Her earthly joy did ruin."

The mistress would murmur from the nursery:

"Have you gone out of your minds? Baby is asleep," or: "How can you, Vassia, a married man, be singing about girls? Besides, the bell will ring for vespers in a minute."

"What's the matter now? We are only singing a church tune."

But the mistress intimated that it was out of place to sing church tunes here, there, and everywhere. Besides, and she pointed eloquently to the little door.

"We shall have to change our quarters, or the devil knows what will become of us," said the master.

He said just as often that he must get another table, and he said it for three years in succession.

When I listened to my employers talking about people, I was always reminded of the boot-shop. They used to talk in the same way there. It was evident to me that my present masters also thought themselves better than any one in the town. They knew the rules of correct conduct to the minutest detail, and, guided by these rules, which were not at all clear to me, they judged others pitilessly and unsparingly. This sitting in judgment aroused in me a ferocious resentment and anger against the laws of my employers, and the breaking of those laws became a source of pleasure to me.

I had a lot of work to do. I fulfilled all the duties of a housemaid, washed the kitchen over on Wednesday, cleaning the samovar and all the copper vessels, and on Saturday cleaned the floor of the rest of the house and both staircases. I had to chop and bring in the wood for the stoves, wash up, prepare vegetables for cooking, and go marketing with the mistress, carrying her basket of purchases after her, besides running errands to the shops and to the chemist.

My real mistress, grandmother's sister, a noisy, indomitable, implacably fierce old woman, rose early at six o'clock, and after washing herself in a hurry, knelt before the icon with only her chemise on, and complained long to God about her life, her children, and her daughter-in-law.

"Lord," she would exclaim, with tears in her voice, pressing her two first fingers and her thumbs against her forehead—"Lord, I ask nothing, I want nothing; only give me rest and peace, Lord, by Thy power!"

Her sobs used to wake me up, and, half asleep, I used to peep from under the blanket, and listen with terror to her passionate prayers. The autumn morning looked dimly in at the kitchen window through panes washed by the rain. On the floor in the cold twilight her gray figure swayed from side to side; she waved her arms alarmingly. Her thin, light hair fell from her small head upon her neck and shoulders from under the swathing handkerchief, which kept slipping off. She would replace it angrily with her left hand, muttering "Oh, bother you!"

Striking her forehead with force, beating her breast and her shoulders, she would wail:

"And my daughter-in-law—punish her, O Lord, on my account! Make her pay for all that she has made me suffer! And open the eyes of my son—open his eyes and Victor's! Lord, help Victor; be merciful to him!"

Victorushka also slept in the kitchen, and, hearing the groans of his mother, would cry in a sleepy voice:

"Mamasha, you are funning down the young wife again. It is really dreadful."

"All right; go to sleep," the old woman would whisper guiltily. She would be silent for a minute perhaps, and then she would begin to murmur vindictively, "May their bones be broken, and may there be no shelter for them on earth, Lord!"

Even grandfather had never prayed so terribly.

When she had said her prayers she used to wake me up.

"Wake up! You will never get on if you do not get up early. Get the samovar ready! Bring the wood in! Did n't you get the sticks ready over night?"

I tried to be quick in order to escape hearing the frothy whisper of the old woman, but it was impossible to please her. She went about the kitchen like a winter snow-storm, hissing:

"Not so much noise, you little devil! Wake Victorushka up, and I will give you something! Now run along to the shop!"

On week-days I used to buy two pounds of wheaten bread and two copecks' worth of rolls for the young mistress. When I brought it in, the women would look at it suspiciously, and, weighing it in the palms of their hands, would ask;

"Was n't there a make-weight? No? Open your mouth!" And then they would cry triumphantly: "He has gobbled up the make-weight; here are the crumbs in his teeth! You see, Vassia?"

I worked willingly enough. It pleased me to abolish dirt from the house, to wash the floors, to clean the copper vessels, the warm-holes, and the door-handles. More than once I heard the women remark about me in their peaceful moments:

"He is zealous."

"And clean."

"Only he is very impudent."

"Well, Mother, who has educated him?"

They both tried to educate me to respect them, but I regarded them as half witted. I did not like them; I would not obey them, and I used to answer them back. The young mistress must have noticed what a bad effect their speeches had upon me, for she said with increasing frequency:

"You ought to remember from what a poor family you have been taken. I gave your mother a silk cloak trimmed with jet."

One day I said to her:

"Do you want me to skin myself to pay for the cloak?"

"Good gracious!" she cried in a tone of alarm, "this boy is capable of setting fire to the place!"

I was extremely surprised. Why did she say that? They both complained to the master about me on this occasion, and he said to me sternly:

"Now, my boy, you had better look out." But one day he said coolly to his wife and his mother: "You are a nice pair! You ride the boy as if he were a gelding! Any other boy would have run away long ago if you had not worked him to death first."

This made the women so angry that they wept, and his wife stamped her foot, crying:

"How can you speak like that before him, you longhaired fool? What can I do with him after this? And in my state of health, too!"

The mother cried sadly:

"May God forgive you, Vassia Vassilich! Only, mark my words, you are spoiling that boy."

When they had gone away raging, the master said to me sternly:

"You see, you little devil, what row's you cause! I shall take you back to your grandfather, and you can be a rag-picker again."

This insult was more than I could bear, and I said: "I had a better life as a rag-picker than I have with you. You took me as a pupil, and what have you taught me? To empty the dish-water!"

He took me by the hair, but not roughly, and looked into my eyes, saying in a tone of astonishment:

"I see you are rebellious. That, my lad, won't suit me. N-o-o."

I thought that I should be sent away for this, but a few days later he came into the kitchen with a roll of thick paper, a pencil, a square, and a ruler in his hands.

"When you have finished cleaning the knives, draw this."

On one sheet of paper was outlined the façade of a two-storied house, with many windows and absurd decorations.

"Here are compasses for you. Place dots on the paper where the ends of the lines come, and then draw from point to point with a ruler, lengthwise first—that will be horizontal—and then across—that will be vertical. Now get on with it."

I was delighted to have some clean work to do, but I gazed at the paper and the instruments with reverent fear, for I understood nothing about them. However, after washing my hands, I sat down to learn. I drew all the horizontal lines on the sheet and compared them. They were quite good, although three seemed superfluous. I drew the vertical lines, and observed with astonishment that the face of the house was absurdly disfigured. The windows had crossed over to the partition wall, and one came out behind the wall and hung in mid-air. The front steps were raised in the air to the height of the second floor; a cornice appeared in the middle of the roof; and a dormer-window on the chimney.

For a long time, hardly able to restrain my tears, I gazed at those miracles of inaccuracy, trying to make out how they had occurred; and not being able to arrive at any conclusion, I decided to rectify the mistakes by the aid of fancy. I drew upon the façade of the house, upon the cornices, and the edge of the roof, crows, doves, and sparrows, and on the ground in front of the windows, people with crooked legs, under umbrellas which did not quite hide their deformities. Then I drew slanting lines across the whole, and took my work to my master.

He raised his eyebrows, ruffled his hair, and gruffly inquired:

"What is all this about?"

"That is rain coming down," I explained. "When it rains, the house looks crooked, because the rain itself is always crooked. The birds—you see, these are all birds—are taking shelter. They always do that when it rains. And these people are running home. There—that is a lady who has fallen down, and that is a peddler with lemons to sell."

"I am much obliged to you," said my master, and bending over the table till his hair swept the paper, he burst out laughing as he cried:

"Och! you deserve to be torn up and thrown away yourself, you wild sparrow!"

The mistress came in, and having looked at my work, said to her husband:

"Beat him!"

But the master said peaceably:

"That's all right; I myself did not begin any better."

Obliterating the spoiled house with a red pencil, he gave me some paper.

"Try once more."

The second copy came out better, except that a window appeared in place of the front door. But I did not like to think that the house was empty, so I filled it with all sorts of inmates. At the windows sat ladies with fans in their hands, and cavaliers with cigarettes. One of these, a non-smoker, was making a "long nose" at all the others. A cabman stood on the steps, and near him lay a dog.

"Why, you have been scribbling over it again!" the master exclaimed angrily.

I explained to him that a house without inhabitants was a dull place, but he only scolded me.

"To the devil with all this foolery! If you want to learn, learn! But this is rubbish!"

When at length I learned to make a copy of the façade which resembled the original he was pleased.

"There, you see what you can do! Now, if you choose, we shall soon get on," and he gave me a lesson.

"Make a plan of this house, showing the arrangement of the rooms, the places of the doors and windows, and the rest. I shall not show you how. You must do it by yourself."

I went to the kitchen and debated. How was I to do it? But at this point my studies in the art of drawing came to a standstill.

The old mistress came to me and said spitefully:

"So you want to draw?"

Seizing me by the hair, she bumped my head on the table so hard that my nose and lips were bruised. Then she darted upon and tore up the paper, swept the instruments from the table, and with her hands on her hips said triumphantly:

"That was more than I could stand. Is an outsider to do the work while his only brother, his own flesh and blood, goes elsewhere?"

The master came running in, his wife rushed after him, and a wild scene began. All three flew at one another, spitting and howling, and it ended in the women weeping, and the master saying to me:

"You will have to give up the idea for a time, and not learn. You can see for yourself what comes of it!"

I pitied him. He was so crushed, so defenseless, and quite deafened by the shrieks of the women. I had realized before that the old woman did not like my studying, for she used to hinder me purposely, so I always asked her before I sat down to my drawing:

"There is nothing for me to do?"

She would answer frowningly:

"When there is I will tell you," and in a few minutes she would send me on some errand, or she would say: "How beautifully you cleaned the staircase to-day! The corners are full of dirt and dust. Go and sweep them!"

I would go and look, but there was never any dust. "Do you dare to argue with me?" she would cry. One day she upset kvass all over my drawings, and at another time she spilt oil from the image lamp over them. She played tricks on me like a young girl, with childish artfulness, and with childish ignorance trying to conceal her artfulness. Never before or since have I met a person who was so soon put into a temper and for such trivial reasons, nor any one so passionately fond of complaining about every one and everything. People, as a rule, are given to complaining, but she did it with a peculiar delight, as if she were singing a song.

Her love for her son was like an insanity. It amused me, but at the same time it frightened me by what I can only describe as its furious intensity. Sometimes, after her morning prayers, she would stand by the stove, with her elbows resting on the mantel-board, and would whisper hotly:

"My luck! My idol! My little drop of hot blood, like a jewel! Light as an angel! He sleeps. Sleep on, child! Clothe thy soul with happy dreams! Dream to thyself a bride, beautiful above all others, a princess and an heiress, the daughter of a merchant! As for your enemies, may they perish as soon as they are born! And your friends, may they live for a hundred years, and may the girls run after you like ducks after the drake!"

All this was inexpressibly ludicrous to me. Coarse, lazy Victor was like a woodpecker, with a woodpecker's large, mottled nose, and the same stubborn and dull nature. Sometimes his mother's whispers awoke him, and he muttered sleepily:

"Go to the devil, Mamasha! What do you mean by snorting right in my face? You make life unbearable."

Sometimes she stole away humbly, laughing:

"Well, go to sleep! Go to sleep, saucy fellow!"

But sometimes her legs seemed to give way, her feet came down heavily on the edge of the stove, and she opened her mouth and panted loudly, as if her tongue were on fire, gurgling out caustic words.

"So-o? It's your mother you are sending to the devil. Ach! you! My shame! Accursed heart-sore! The devil must have set himself in my heart to ruin you from birth!"

She uttered obscene words, words of the drunken streets. It was painful to listen to her. She slept little, fitfully jumping down from the stove sometimes several times in the night, and coming over to the couch to wake me.

"What is it?"

"Be quiet!" she would whisper, crossing herself and looking at something in the darkness. "O Lord, Elias the prophet, great martyr Varvara, save me from sudden death!"

She lighted the candle with a trembling hand. Her round, nosy face was swollen tensely; her gray eyes, blinking alarmingly, gazed fixedly at the surroundings, which looked different in the twilight. The kitchen, which was large, but encumbered with cupboards and trunks, looked small by night. There the moonbeams lived quietly; the flame of the lamp burning before the icon quivered; the knives gleamed like icicles on the walls; on the floor the black frying-pans looked like faces without eyes.

The old woman would clamber down cautiously from the stove, as if she were stepping into the water from a river-bank, and, slithering along with her bare feet, went into the corner, where over the wash-stand hung a ewer that reminded me of a severed head. There was also a pitcher of water standing there. Choking and panting, she drank the water, and then looked out of the window through the pale-blue pattern of hoar-frost on the panes.

"Have mercy on me, O God! have mercy on me!" she prayed in a whisper. Then putting out the candle, she fell on her knees, and whispered in an aggrieved tone: "Who loves me, Lord? To whom am I necessary?"

Climbing back on the stove, and opening the little door of the chimney, she tried to feel if the flue-plate lay straight, soiling her hands with soot, and fell asleep at that precise moment, just as if she had been struck by an invisible hand. When I felt resentful toward her I used to think what a pity it was that she had not married grandfather. She would have led him a life!

She often made me very miserable, but there were days when her puffy face became sad, her eyes were suffused with tears, and she said very touchingly:

"Do you think that I have an easy time? I brought children into the world, reared them, set them on their feet, and for what? To live with them and be their general servant. Do you think that is sweet to me? My son has brought a strange woman and new blood into the family. Is it nice for me? Well?"

"No, it is not," I said frankly.

"Aha! there you are, you see!" And she began to talk shamelessly about her daughter-in-law. "Once I went with her to the bath and saw her. Do you think she has anything to flatter herself about? Can she be called beautiful?"

She always spoke objectionably about the relations of husband and wife. At first her speeches aroused my disgust, but I soon accustomed myself to listen to them with attention and with great interest, feeling that there was something painfully true about them.

"Woman is strength; she deceived God Himself. That is so," she hissed, striking her hand on the table. "Through Eve are we all condemned to hell. What do you think of that?"

On the subject of woman's power she could talk endlessly, and it always seemed as if she were trying to frighten some one in these conversations. I particularly remembered that "Eve deceived God."

Overlooking our yard was the wing of a large building, and of the eight flats comprised in it, four were occupied by officers, and the fifth by the regimental chaplain. The yard was always full of officers' servants and orderlies, after whom ran laundresses, housemaids, and cooks. Dramas and romances were being carried on in all the kitchens, accompanied by tears, quarrels, and fights. The soldiers quarreled among themselves and with the landlord's workmen; they used to beat the women.

The yard was a seething pot of what is called vice, immorality, the wild, untamable appetites of healthy lads. This life, which brought out all the cruel sensuality, the thoughtless tyranny, the obscene boastfulness of the conqueror, was criticized in every detail by my employers at dinner, tea, and supper. The old woman knew all the stories of the yard, and told them with gusto, rejoicing in the misfortunes of others. The younger woman listened to these tales in silence, smiling with her swollen lips. Victor used to burst out laughing, but the master would frown and say:

"That will do, Mamasha!"

"Good Lord! I mustn't speak now, I suppose!" the story-teller complained; but Victor encouraged her.

"Go on, Mother! What is there to hinder you? We are all your own people, after all."

I could never understand why one should talk shamelessly before one's own people.

The elder son bore himself toward his mother with contemptuous pity, and avoided being alone with her, for if that happened, she would surely overwhelm him with complaints against his wife, and would never fail to ask him for money. He would hastily press into her hand a ruble or so or several pieces of small silver.

"It is not right, Mother; take the money. I do not grudge it to you, but it is unjust."

"But I want it for beggars, for candles when I go to church."

"Now, where will you find beggars there? You will end by spoiling Victor."

"You don't love your brother. It is a great sin on your part."

He would go out, waving her away.

Victor's manner to his mother was coarse and derisive. He was very greedy, and he was always hungry. On Sundays his mother used to bake custards, and she always hid a few of them in a vessel under the couch on which I slept. When Victor left the dinner-table he would get them out and grumble:

"Couldn't you have saved a few more, you old' fool?"

"Make haste and eat them before any one sees you."

"I will tell how you steal cakes for me behind their backs."

Once I took out the vessel and ate two custards, for which Victor nearly killed me. He disliked me as heartily as I disliked him. He used to jeer at me and make me clean his boots about three times a day, and when I slept in the loft, he used to push up the trapdoor and spit in the crevice, trying to aim at my head.

It may be that in imitation of his brother, who often said "wild fowl," Victor also needed to use some catchwords, but his were all senseless and particularly absurd.

"Mamasha! Left wheel! where are my socks?"

And he used to follow me about with stupid questions.

"Alesha, answer me. Why do we write 'sinenki' and pronounce it 'phiniki'? Why do we say 'Kolokola' and not 'Okolokola'? Why do we say 'K'derevou' and not 'gdye plachou'?"

I did not like the way any of them spoke, and having been educated in the beautiful tongue which grandmother and grandfather spoke, I could not understand at first how words that had no sort of connection came to be coupled together, such as "terribly funny," "I am dying to eat," "awfully happy." It seemed to me that what was funny could not be terrible, that to be happy could not be awful, and that people did not die for something to eat.

"Can one say that?" I used to ask them; but they jeered at me:

"I say, what a teacher! Do you want your ears plucked?"

But to talk of "plucking" ears also appeared incorrect to me. One could "pluck" grass and flowers and nuts, but not ears. They tried to prove to me that ears could be plucked, but they did not convince me, and I said triumphantly:

"Anyhow, you have not plucked my ears."

All around me I saw much cruel insolence, filthy shamelessness. It was far worse here than in the Kunavin streets, which were full of "houses of resort" and "street-walkers." Beneath the filth and brutality in Kunavin there was a something which made itself felt, and which seemed to explain it all—a strenuous, half-starved existence and hard work. But here they were overfed and led easy lives, and the work went on its way without fuss or worry. A corrosive, fretting weariness brooded over all.

My life was hard enough, anyhow, but I felt it still harder when grandmother came to see me. She would appear from the black flight of steps, enter the kitchen, cross herself before the icon, and then bow low to her younger sister. That bow bent me down like a heavy weight, and seemed to smother me.

"Ah, Akulina, is it you?" was my mistress's cold and negligent greeting to grandmother.

I should not have recognized grandmother. Her lips modestly compressed, her face changed out of knowledge, she set herself quietly on a bench near the door, keeping silence like a guilty creature, except when she answered her sister softly and submissively. This was torture to me, and I used to say angrily: "What are you sitting there for?"

Winking at me kindly, she replied:

"You be quiet. You are not master here.".

"He is always meddling in matters which do not concern him, however we beat him or scold him," and the mistress was launched on her complaints.

She often asked her sister spitefully:

"Well, Akulina, so you are living like a beggar?"

"That is a misfortune."

"It is no misfortune where there is no shame."

"They say that Christ also lived on charity."

"Blockheads say so, and heretics, and you, old fool, listen to them! Christ was no beggar, but the Son of God. He will come, it is said, in glory, to judge the quick and dead—and dead, mind you. You will not be able to hide yourself from Him, Matushka, although you may be burned to ashes. He is punishing you and Vassili now for your pride, and on my account, because I asked help from you when you were rich."