My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [15]
Two small square windows threw their light into the darkness of the autumn night, and from time to time some one tapped on them lightly. The yellow lights of two tallow candles, pointed like spears, flickered on the table.
Uncle Jaakov grew more and more rigid, as though he were in a deep sleep with his teeth clenched; but his hands seemed to live with a separate existence. The bent fingers of his right hand quivered indistinctly over the dark keyboard, just like fluttering and struggling birds, while his left passed up and down the neck with elusive rapidity.
When he had been drinking he nearly always sang through his teeth in an unpleasantly shrill voice, an endless song:
"If Jaakove were a dog
He 'd howl from morn to night.
Oie! I am a-weary!
Oie! Life is dreary!
In the streets the nuns walk,
On the fence the ravens talk.
Oie! I am a-weary!
The cricket chirps behind the stove
And sets the beetles on the move.
Oie! I am a-weary!
One beggar hangs his stockings up to dry,
The other steals it away on the sly.
Oie! I am a-weary!
Yes! Life is very dreary!"
I could not bear this song, and when my uncle came to the part about the beggars I used to weep in a tempest of ungovernable misery.
The music had the same effect on Tsiganok as on the others; he listened to it, running his fingers through his black, shaggy locks, and staring into a corner, halfasleep.
Sometimes he would exclaim unexpectedly in a complaining tone, "Ah! if I only had a voice. Lord! how I should sing."
And grandmother, with a sigh, would say: "Are you going to break our hearts, Jaasha? . . . Suppose you give us a dance, Vanyatka?"
Her request was not always complied with at once, but it did sometimes happen that the musician suddenly swept the chords with his hands, then, doubling up his fists with a gesture as if he were noiselessly casting an invisible something from him to the floor, cried sharply:
"Away, melancholy! Now, Vanka, stand up!"
Looking very smart, as he pulled his yellow blouse straight, Tsiganok would advance to the middle of the kitchen, very carefully, as if he were walking on nails, and blushing all over his swarthy face and simpering bashfully, would say entreatingly:
"Faster, please, Jaakov Vassilitch!"
The guitar jingled furiously, heels tapped spasmodically on the floor, plates and dishes rattled on the table and in the cupboard, while Tsiganok blazed amidst the kitchen lights, swooping like a kite, waving his arms like the sails of a windmill, and moving his
feet so quickly that they seemed to be stationary; then he stooped to the floor, and spun round and round like a golden swallow, the splendor of his silk blouse shedding an illumination all around, as it quivered and rippled, as if he were alight and floating in the air. He danced unweariedly, oblivious of everything, and it seemed as though, if the door were to open, he would have danced out, down the street, and through the town and away . . . beyond our ken.
"Cross over!" cried Uncle Jaakov, stamping his feet, and giving a piercing whistle; then in an irritating voice he shouted the old, quaint saying:
"Oh, my! if I were not sorry to leave my spade
I 'd from my wife and children a break have made."
The people sitting at table pawed at each other, and from time to time shouted and yelled as if they were being roasted alive. The bearded chief workman slapped his bald head and joined in the uproar. Once he bent towards me, brushing my shoulder with his soft beard, and said in my