My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [13]
They had an inexhaustible fund of such pranks, but the head workman bore it all in silence, only quackling softly, and taking care before he touched either trie iron, the scissors, the needlework or the thimble, to moisten his fingers copiously with saliva. This became a habit with him, and even at dinner-time before he took up his knife and fork he slobbered over his fingers, causing great amusement to the children. When he was hurt, his large face broke into waves of wrinkles, which curiously glided over his forehead, and, raising his eyebrows, vanished mysteriously on his bald cranium.
I do not remember how grandfather bore himself with regard to his sons' amusements, but grandmother used to shake her fist at them, crying:
"Shameless, ill-natured creatures!"
But my uncles spoke evil of Tsiganok too behind his back; they made fun of him, found fault with his work, and called him a thief and an idler.
I asked grandmother why they did this. She explained it to me without hesitation, and, as always, made the matter quite clear to me. "You see, each wants to take Vaniushka with him when he sets up in business for himself; that is why they run him down to each other. Say they, 'He 's a bad workman'; but they don't mean it. It is their artfulness. In addition to this, they are afraid that Vaniushka will not go with either of them, but will stay with grandfather, who always gets his own way, and might set up a third workshop with Ivanka, which would do your uncles no good. Now do you understand?" She laughed softly. "They are crafty about everything, setting God at naught; and grandfather, seeing their artfulness, teases them by saying: 'I shall buy Ivan a certificate of exemption so that they won't take him for a soldier. I can't do without him.' This makes them angry; it is just what they don't want; besides, they grudge the money. Exemptions cost money."
I was living with grandmother again, as I had done on the steamer, and every evening before I fell asleep she used to tell me fairy stories, or tales about her life, which were just like a story. But she spoke about family affairs, such as the distribution of the property amongst the children, and grandfather's purchase of a new house, lightly, in the character of a stranger regarding the matter from a distance, or at the most that of a neighbor, rather than that of the person next in importance to the head of the house.
From her I learned that Tsiganok was a foundling; he had been found one wet night in early spring, on a bench in the porch.
"There he lay," said grandmother pensively and mysteriously, "hardly able to cry, for he was nearly numb with cold."
"But why do people abandon children?"
"It is because the mother has no milk, or anything to feed her baby with. Then she hears that a child which has been born somewhere lately is dead, and she goes and leaves her own there."
She paused and scratched her head; then sighing and gazing at the ceiling, she continued:
"Poverty is always the reason, Oleysha; and a kind of poverty which must not be talked about, for an unmarried girl dare not admit that she has a child--people would cry shame upon her.
"Grandfather wanted to hand Vaniushka over to the police, but I said 'No, we will keep him ourselves to fill the place of our dead ones.' For I have had eighteen children, you know. If they had all lived they would have filled a street--eighteen new families! I was married at eighteen, you see, and by this time I had had fifteen children, but God so loved my flesh and blood that He took all of them--all my little babies to the angels, and I was sorry and glad at the same time."
Sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightdress, huge and dishevelled, with her black hair falling about her, she looked like the bear which a bearded woodman from Cergatch had led into our yard not long ago.
Making the sign of the cross on her spotless, snowwhite breast, she laughed softly, always ready to make light of everything.
"It was better for them