My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [35]
Sometimes my mother appeared on the scene from somewhere or other, for a short time. Lofty and severe, she looked upon us all with her cold gray eyes, which were like the winter sun, and soon vanished again, leaving us nothing to remember her by.
Once I asked grandmother: "Are you a witch?"
"Well! What idea will you get into your head next?" she laughed. But she added in a thoughtful tone: "How could I be a witch? Witchcraft is a difficult science. Why, I can't read and write even; I don't even know my alphabet. Grandfather--he 's a regular cormorant for learning, but Our Lady never made me a scholar."
Then she presented still another phase of her life to me as she went on:
"I was a little orphan like you, you know. My mother was just a poor peasant woman--and a cripple. She was little more than a child when a gentleman took advantage of her. In fear of what was to come, she threw herself out of the window one night, and broke her ribs and hurt her shoulder so much that her right hand, which she needed most, was withered . . . and a noted lace-worker, too! Well, of course her employers did not want her after that, and they dismissed her--to get her living as well as she could. How can one earn bread without hands? So she had to beg, to live on the charity of others; but in those times people were richer and kinder . . . the carpenters of Balakhana, as well as the lace-workers, were famous, and all the people were for show.
"Sometimes my mother and I stayed in the town for the autumn and winter, but as soon as the Archangel Gabriel waved his sword and drove away the winter, and clothed the earth with spring, we started on our travels again, going whither our eyes led us. To Mourome we went, and to Urievitz, and by the upper Volga, and by the quiet Oka. It was good to wander about the world in the spring and summer, when all the earth was smiling and the grass was like velvet; and the Holy Mother of God scattered flowers over the fields, and everything seemed to bring joy to one, and speak straight to one's heart. And sometimes, when we were on the hills, my mother, closing her blue eyes, would begin to sing in a voice which, though not powerful, was as clear as a bell; and listening to her, everything about us seemed to fall into a breathless sleep. Ah! God knows it was good to be alive in those days!
"But by the time that I was nine years old, my mother began to feel that she would be blamed if she took me about begging with her any longer; in fact, she began to be ashamed of the life we were leading, and so she settled at Balakhana, and went about the streets begging from house to house--taking up a position in the church porch on Sundays and holidays, while I stayed at home and learned to make lace. I was an apt pupil, because I was so anxious to help my mother; but sometimes I did not seem to get on at all, and then I used to cry. But in two years I had learned the business, mind you, small as I was, and the fame of of it went through the town. When people wanted really good lace, they came to us at once:
"'Now, Akulina, make your bobbins fly!'"
"And I was very happy . . . those were great days for me. But of course it was mother's work, not mine; for though she had only one hand and that one useless, it was she who taught me how to work. And a good teacher is worth more than ten workers.
"Well, I began to be proud. 'Now, my little mother,' I said, 'you must give up begging, for I can earn enough to keep us both.'
"'Nothing of the sort!' she replied. 'What you earn shall be set aside for your dowry.'
"And not long after this, grandfather came on the scene. A wonderful lad he was--only twenty-two, and already a freewater-man. His mother had had her eye on me