My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [39]
He fell into another silence, just as if he had dropped off to sleep. His thoughts were far away, and his eyes, as they glanced sideways out of the window, looked small and sharp.
"Tell me some more," I said, as a gentle reminder of my presence.
He started, and then began again.
"Well--we were talking about French people. They are human beings like ourselves, after all, not worse, or more sinful. Sometimes they used to call out to my mother, 'Madame! Madame!'--that means 'my lady,' 'my mistress'--and she would put flour-- five poods of it--into their sacks. Her strength was extraordinary for a woman; she could lift me up by the hair quite easily until I was twenty, and even at that age I was no light weight. Well, this orderly, Miron, loved horses; he used to go into the yard and make signs for them to give him a horse to groom. At first there was trouble about it--there were disputes and enmity--but in the end the peasants used to call him 'Hi, Miron!' and he used to laugh and nod his head, and run to them. He was sandy, almost red-haired, with a large nose and thick lips. He knew all about horses, and treated their maladies with wonderful success; later on he became a veterinary surgeon at Nijni, but he went out of his mind and was killed in a fire. Towards the spring the officer began to show signs of breaking up, and passed quietly away, one day in early spring, while he was sitting at the window of the outhouse--just sitting and thinking, with drooping head.
"That is how his end came. I was very grieved about it. I cried a little, even, on the quiet. He was so gentle. He used to pull my ears, and talk to me so kindly in his own tongue. I could not understand him, but I liked to hear him--human kindness is not to be bought in any market. He began to teach me his language, but my mother forbade it, and even went so far as to send me to the priest, who prescribed a beating for me, and went himself to make a complaint to the officer. In those days, my lad, we were treated very harshly. You have not experienced anything like it yet. . . . What you have had to put up with is nothing to it, and don't you forget it! . . . Take my own case, for example. ... I had to go through so much--"
Darkness began to fall. Grandfather seemed to grow curiously large in the twilight, and his eyes gleamed like those of a cat. On most subjects he spoke quietly, carefully, and thoughtfully, but when he talked about himself his words came quickly and his tone was passionate and boastful, and I did not like to hear him; nor did I relish his frequent and peremptory command:
"Remember what I am telling you now! Take care you don't forget this!"
He told me of many things which I had no desire to remember, but which, without any command from him, I involuntarily retained in my memory, to cause me a morbid sickness of heart.
He never told fictitious stories, but always related events which had really happened; and I also noticed that he hated to be questioned, which prompted me to ask persistently:
"Who are the best--the French or the Russians?" "How can I tell? I never saw a Frenchman at home," he growled angrily. "A Pole cat is all right in its own hole," he added. "But are the Russians good?" "In many respects they are, but they were better when the landlords ruled. We are all at sixes and sevens now; people can't even get a living. The gentlefolk, of course, are to blame, because they have more intelligence to back them up; but that can't be said of all of them, but only of a few good ones who have already been proved. As for the others--most of them are as foolish as mice; they will take anything you like to give them. We have plenty of nut shells amongst us, but the kernels are missing; only nut shells, the kernels have been devoured. There 's a lesson for you, man! We ought to have learned