My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [29]
"I 'll smash you against the stove--"
I escaped to a corner of the best parlor, under the image, and ran against grandfather's knees; he put me aside, and gazing upwards, went on in a low voice:
"There is no excuse for any of us--"
The image-lamp burned brightly over his head, a candle stood on the table in the middle of the room, and the light of a foggy winter's morning was already peeping in at the window.
Presently he bent towards me, and asked:
"What's the matter with you?"
Everything was the matter with me--my head was clammy, my body sorely weary; but I did not like to say so because everything about me was so strange. Almost all the chairs in the room were occupied by strangers; there were a priest in a lilac-colored robe, a gray-headed old man with glasses, in a military uniform, and many other people who all sat quite still like wooden figures, or figures frozen, as it were, in expectation of something, and listened to the sound of water splashing somewhere near. By the door stood Uncle Jaakov, very upright, with his hands behind his back. "Here!" said grandfather to him, "take this child to bed."
My uncle beckoned me to follow him, and led the way on tiptoe to the door of grandmother's room, and when I had got into bed he whispered:
"Your Aunt Natalia is dead."
I was not surprised to hear it. She had not been visible for a long time, either in the kitchen or at meals.
"Where is grandmother?" I asked.
"Down there," he replied, waving his hand, and went out of the room, still going softly on his bare feet.
I lay in bed and looked about me. I seemed to see hairy, gray, sightless faces pressed against the windowpane, and though I knew quite well that those were grandmother's clothes hanging over the box in the corner, I imagined that some living creature was hiding there and waiting. I put my head under the pillow, leaving one eye uncovered so that I could look at the door, and wished that I dared jump out of bed and run out of the room. It was very hot, and there was a heavy, stifling odor which reminded me of the night when Tsiganok died, and that rivulet of blood ran along the floor.
Something in my head or my heart seemed to be swelling; everything that I had seen in that house seemed to stretch before my mind's eye, like a train of winter sledges in the street, and to rise up and crush me.
The door opened very slowly, and grandmother crept into the room, and closing the door with her shoulder, came slowly forward; and holding out her hand to the blue light of the image-lamp, wailed softly, pitifully as a child:
"Oh, my poor little hand! My poor hand hurts
CHAPTER V
BEFORE long another nightmare began. One evening when we had finished tea and grandfather and I sat over the Psalter, while grandmother was washing up the cups and saucers, Uncle Jaakov burst into the room, as dishevelled as ever, and bearing a strange resemblance to one of the household brooms. Without greeting us, he tossed his cap into a corner and began speaking rapidly, with excited gestures.
"Mischka is kicking up an utterly uncalled-for row. He had dinner with me, drank too much, and began to show unmistakable signs of being out of his mind; he broke up the crockery, tore up an order which had just been completed--it was a woolen dress--broke the windows, insulted me and Gregory, and now he is coming here, threatening you. He keeps shouting, 'I 'll pull father's beard for him! I'll kill him!' so you had better look out."
Grandfather rose slowly to his feet, resting his hands on the table. He was frowning heavily, and his face seemed to dry up, growing narrow and cruel, like a hatchet.
"Do you hear that, Mother?" he yelled. "What do you think of it, eh? Our own son coming to kill his father! But it is quite time; it is quite time, my children."
He went up the room, straightening his shoulders, to the door, sharply snapped the heavy iron hook, which fastened it, into its ring, and turned again to Uncle Jaakov saying:
"This is all because you want to get hold of Varvara's dowry. That's