Poor Folk
send you a book of MY OWN poems. Already I have copied out part of the
manuscript.
Everything with me is going well; so pray do not be anxious on my
account, beloved. What Thedora told you about me was sheer rubbish. Tell
her from me that she has not been speaking the truth. Yes, do not fail
to give this mischief-maker my message. It is not the case that I have
gone and sold a new uniform. Why should I do so, seeing that I have
forty roubles of salary still to come to me? Do not be uneasy, my
darling. Thedora is a vindictive woman--merely a vindictive woman. We
shall yet see better days. Only do you get well, my angel--only do you
get well, for the love of God, lest you grieve an old man. Also, who
told you that I was looking thin? Slanders again--nothing but slanders!
I am as healthy as could be, and have grown so fat that I am ashamed
to be so sleek of paunch. Would that you were equally healthy!... Now
goodbye, my angel. I kiss every one of your tiny fingers, and remain
ever your constant friend,
MAKAR DIEVUSHKIN.
P.S.--But what is this, dearest one, that you have written to me? Why do
you place me upon such a pedestal? Moreover, how could I come and visit
you frequently? How, I repeat? Of course, I might avail myself of the
cover of night; but, alas! the season of the year is what it is, and
includes no night time to speak of. In fact, although, throughout your
illness and delirium, I scarcely left your side for a moment, I cannot
think how I contrived to do the many things that I did. Later, I ceased
to visit you at all, for the reason that people were beginning to notice
things, and to ask me questions. Yet, even so, a scandal has arisen.
Theresa I trust thoroughly, for she is not a talkative woman; but
consider how it will be when the truth comes out in its entirety! What
THEN will folk not say and think? Nevertheless, be of good cheer, my
beloved, and regain your health. When you have done so we will contrive
to arrange a rendezvous out of doors.
June 1st
MY BELOVED MAKAR ALEXIEVITCH,--So eager am I to do something that
will please and divert you in return for your care, for your ceaseless
efforts on my behalf--in short, for your love for me--that I have
decided to beguile a leisure hour for you by delving into my locker, and
extracting thence the manuscript which I send you herewith. I began it
during the happier period of my life, and have continued it at intervals
since. So often have you asked me about my former existence--about my
mother, about Pokrovski, about my sojourn with Anna Thedorovna, about my
more recent misfortunes; so often have you expressed an earnest desire
to read the manuscript in which (God knows why) I have recorded certain
incidents of my life, that I feel no doubt but that the sending of it
will give you sincere pleasure. Yet somehow I feel depressed when I read
it, for I seem now to have grown twice as old as I was when I penned
its concluding lines. Ah, Makar Alexievitch, how weary I am--how this
insomnia tortures me! Convalescence is indeed a hard thing to bear!
B. D.
ONE
UP to the age of fourteen, when my father died, my childhood was the
happiest period of my life. It began very far away from here in the
depths of the province of Tula, where my father filled the position of
steward on the vast estates of the Prince P----. Our house was situated in
one of the Prince’s villages, and we lived a quiet, obscure, but happy,
life. A gay little child was I--my one idea being ceaselessly to run
about the fields and the woods and the garden. No one ever gave me a
thought, for my father was always occupied with business affairs, and
my mother with her housekeeping. Nor did any one ever give me any
lessons--a circumstance for which I was not sorry. At earliest dawn I
would hie me to a pond or a copse, or to a hay or a harvest field, where
the sun could warm me, and I could roam wherever I liked, and scratch my
hands with bushes, and tear my clothes in pieces. For this I used to get
blamed afterwards, but I did not care.
Had it befallen me never to quit that village--had it befallen me to
remain for ever in that spot--I should always have been happy; but fate
ordained that I should leave my birthplace even before my girlhood had
come to an end. In short, I was only twelve years old when we removed
to St. Petersburg. Ah! how it hurts me to recall the mournful gatherings
before our departure, and to recall how bitterly I wept when the time
came for us to say farewell to all that I had held so dear! I remember
throwing myself upon my father’s neck, and beseeching him with tears
to stay in the country a little longer; but he bid me be silent, and
my mother, adding her tears to mine, explained that business matters
compelled us to go. As a matter of fact, old Prince P---- had just died,
and his heirs had dismissed my father from his post; whereupon, since
he had a little money privately invested in St. Petersburg, he bethought
him that his personal presence in the capital was necessary for the
due management of his affairs. It was my mother who told me this.
Consequently we settled here in St. Petersburg, and did not again move
until my father died.
How difficult I found it to grow accustomed to my new life! At the time
of our removal to St. Petersburg it was autumn--a season when, in the
country, the weather is clear and keen and bright, all agricultural
labour has come to an end, the great sheaves of corn are safely garnered
in the byre, and the birds are flying hither and thither in clamorous
flocks. Yes, at that season the country is joyous and fair, but here
in St. Petersburg, at the time when we reached the city, we encountered
nothing but rain, bitter autumn frosts, dull skies, ugliness, and crowds
of strangers who looked hostile, discontented, and disposed to take
offence. However, we managed to settle down--though I remember that
in our new home there was much noise and confusion as we set the
establishment in order. After this my father was seldom at home, and my
mother had few spare moments; wherefore, I found myself forgotten.
The first morning after our arrival, when I awoke from sleep, how sad I
felt! I could see that our windows looked out upon a drab space of wall,
and that the street below was littered with filth. Passers-by were few,
and as they walked they kept muffling themselves up against the cold.
Then there ensued days when dullness and depression reigned supreme.
Scarcely a relative or an acquaintance did we possess in St. Petersburg,
and even Anna Thedorovna and my father had come to loggerheads with one
another, owing to the fact that he owed her money. In fact, our only
visitors were business callers, and as a rule these came but to wrangle,
to argue, and to raise a disturbance. Such visits would make my father
look very discontented, and seem out of temper. For hours and hours he
would pace the room with a frown on his face and a brooding silence on
his lips. Even my mother did not dare address him at these times,
while, for my own part, I used to sit reading quietly and humbly in a
corner--not venturing to make a movement of any sort.
Three months after our arrival in St. Petersburg I was sent to a
boarding-school. Here I found myself thrown among strange people; here
everything was grim and uninviting, with teachers continually shouting
at me, and my fellow-pupils for ever holding me up to derision, and
myself constantly feeling awkward and uncouth. How strict, how exacting
was the system! Appointed hours for everything, a common table,
ever-insistent teachers! These things simply worried and tortured me.
Never from the first could I sleep, but used to weep many a chill, weary
night away. In the evenings everyone would have to repeat or to learn
her lessons. As I crouched over a dialogue or a vocabulary, without
daring even to stir, how my thoughts would turn to the chimney-corner
at home, to my father, to my mother, to my old nurse, to the tales which
the latter had been used to tell! How sad it all was! The memory of the
merest trifle at home would please me, and I would think and think how
nice things used to be at home. Once more I would be sitting in our
little parlour at tea with my parents--in the familiar little parlour
where everything was snug and warm! How ardently, how convulsively I
would seem to be embracing my mother! Thus I would ponder, until at
length tears of sorrow would softly gush forth and choke my bosom, and
drive the lessons out of my head. For I never could master the tasks of
the morrow; no matter how much my mistress and fellow-pupils might gird
at me, no matter how much I might repeat my lessons over and over to
myself, knowledge never came with the morning. Consequently, I used to
be ordered the kneeling punishment, and given only one meal in the day.
How dull and dispirited I used to feel! From the first my fellow-pupils
used to tease and deride and mock me whenever I was saying my lessons.
Also, they used to pinch me as we were on our way to dinner or tea, and
to make groundless complaints of me to the head mistress. On the other
hand, how heavenly it seemed when, on Saturday evening, my old nurse
arrived to fetch me! How I would embrace the old woman in transports
of joy! After dressing me, and wrapping me up, she would find that
she could scarcely keep pace with me on the way home, so full was I of
chatter and tales about one thing and another. Then, when I had arrived
home merry and lighthearted, how fervently I would embrace my parents,
as though I had not seen them for ten years. Such a fussing would there
be--such a talking and a telling of tales! To everyone I would run with
a greeting, and laugh, and giggle, and scamper about, and skip for
very joy. True, my father and I used to have grave conversations about
lessons and teachers and the French language and grammar; yet we were
all very happy and contented together. Even now it thrills me to think
of those moments. For my father’s sake I tried hard to learn my lessons,
for I could see that he was spending his last kopeck upon me, and
himself subsisting God knows how. Every day he grew more morose and
discontented and irritable; every day his character kept changing for
the worse. He had suffered an influx of debts, nor were his business
affairs prospering. As for my mother, she was afraid even to say a word,
or to weep aloud, for fear of still further angering him. Gradually
she sickened, grew thinner and thinner, and became taken with a painful
cough. Whenever I reached home from school I would find every one
low-spirited, and my mother shedding silent tears, and my father raging.
Bickering and high words would arise, during which my father was wont
to declare that, though he no longer derived the smallest pleasure or
relaxation from life, and had spent his last coin upon my education, I
had not yet mastered the French language. In short, everything began to
go wrong, to turn to unhappiness; and for that circumstance, my father
took vengeance upon myself and my mother. How he could treat my poor
mother so I cannot understand. It used to rend my heart to see her, so
hollow were her cheeks becoming, so sunken her eyes, so hectic her
face. But it was chiefly around myself that the disputes raged. Though
beginning only with some trifle, they would soon go on to God knows
what. Frequently, even I myself did not know to what they related.
Anything and everything would enter into them, for my father would say
that I was an utter dunce at the French language; that the head mistress
of my school was a stupid, common sort of women who cared nothing for
morals; that he (my father) had not yet succeeded in obtaining another
post; that Lamonde’s “Grammar” was a wretched book--even a worse one