My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [105]
We had contrived a very merry game for Saturdays, and we were preparing for it all the week by collecting all the troddendown bast shoes we could find and storing them in convenient corners. Then on Saturday evening when the Tartar porters came home from the Siberian ports, we took up a position at the cross-roads and pelted the Tartars with shoes.
At first this used to irritate them, and they ran after us, and abused us; but the game soon began to interest them, and knowing what they might expect they appeared on the field of battle also armed with a quantity of bast shoes, and what is more, they found out where we kept our war materials and stole them. We made a complaint about this--"It is not playing the game!" Then they divided the shoes, giving us half, and the fight began. Generally they drew themselves up in an open place, in the middle of the cross-roads, and with yells we ran round them, hurling the shoes. They also yelled, and laughed loud enough to deafen any one when one of us buried his head in the sand, having been thrown down by a shoe adroitly hurled under his feet.
This game would be carried on with zest for a long time, sometimes till it was nearly dark; and the inhabitants used to gather round, or watch us from corners, and grumble, because they thought it was the right thing to do. The dusty shoes flew about like crows in the damp air; sometimes one of us was hit hard, but the pleasure of the game was greater than pain or injury.
The Tartars were not less keen on it than we were; often when we had finished playing we went with them to an eating-house where they fed us with a special sweet kind of preserve made with fruit, and after supper we drank thick, brick-colored tea, with sweetmeats. We liked these people, whose strength matched their great size; there was something about them so childlike and transparent. The points which most struck me about them were their meekness, their unwavering good-nature, and their grave, impressive respect for each other.
They all laughed so heartily that the tears ran Sown their faces; and one of them, a native of Kassimov, with a broken nose, was a man renowned for his strength. One day he carried, from a barge which was at some distance from the shore, a bell weighing twenty-seven poods, and he roared out laughing as he cried: "Voo! Voo!"
One day he made Vyakhir sit on the palm of his hand, and lifting him on high, he said:
"Look where you are living now, right up in the sky."
In bad weather we used to assemble at Yaz's home, in the burial-ground, where his father's lodge was. This father was an individual with hoisted bones, long arms, and a small head; mud-colored hair grew on his face. His head looked like a burdock set on his long, thin neck, as on a stalk. He had a delightful way of half closing his yellow eyes and muttering rapidly:
"God give us rest. Ouch!"
We bought three zolotniks of tea, eight portions of sugar, some bread, and, of course, a portion of vodka for Yaz's father, who was sternly ordered about by Tchurka:
"Good for nothing peasant, get the samovar ready."
The peasant laughed and prepared the tin samovar; and while we discussed business as we waited for tea to be ready, he gave us good advice:
"Look here! The day after to-morrow is the month's mind of Trusov, and there will be some feasting going on there. . . . There 's a place to pick up bones."
"The cook collects all the bones at Trusov's," observed Tchurka, who knew everything.
Vyakhir said dreamily, as he looked out of the window on the graveyard:
"We shall soon be able to go out to the woods."
Yaz was always silent, looking at us all expressively with his sad eyes. In silence he showed us his toys--wooden soldiers which he had found in a rubbish pit, horses without legs, pieces of copper, and buttons.
His father set the table with cups and saucers of various patterns, and brought in the samovar. Kostrom sat down to pour out tea, and he, when he had drunk his vodka, climbed