My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [50]
I used to climb on the roof of the shed, whence I could look across the yard; and in at the open window I could see the blue light of the spirit-lamp on the table, and his dark figure as he wrote something in a tattered notebook, with his spectacles gleaming with a bluish light, like ice. The wizard-like employment of this man often kept me on the roof for hours together, with my curiosity excited to a tormenting pitch. Sometimes he stood at the window, as if he were framed in it, with his hands behind him, looking straight at the roof; but apparently he did not see me, a fact which gave me great offense. Suddenly he would start back to the table, and bending double, would begin to rummage about.
I think that if he had been rich and better dressed I should have been afraid of him; but he was poor--a dirty shirt collar could be seen above the collar of his coat, his trousers were soiled and patched, and the slippers on his bare feet were down-trodden--and the poor are neither formidable nor dangerous. I had unconsciously learned this from grandmother's pitiful respect, and grandfather's contempt for them.
Nobody in the house liked "Good-business." They all made fun of him. The soldier's lively wife nicknamed him "Chalk-nose," Uncle Peter used to call him "The Apothecary" or "The Wizard," and grandfather described him as "The Black Magician" or "That Freemason."
"What does he do?" I asked grandmother.
"That is no business of yours. Hold your tongue!"
But one day I plucked up courage to go to his window, and concealing my nervousness with difficulty, I asked him, "What are you doing?"
He started, and looked at me for a long time over the top of his glasses; then stretching out his hand, which was covered with scars caused by burns, he said:
"Climb up!"
His proposal that I should enter by the window instead of the door raised him still higher in my estimation. He sat on a case, and stood me in front of him; then he moved away and came back again quite close to me, and asked in a low voice:
"And where do you come from?"
This was curious, considering that I sat close to him at table in the kitchen four times a day.
"I am the landlord's grandson," I replied.
"Ah--yes," he said, looking at his fingers.
He said no more, so I thought it necessary to explain to him:
"I am not a Kashmirin--my name is Pyeshkov."
"Pyeshkov?" he repeated incredulously. "Goodbusiness!"
Moving me on one side, he rose, and went to the table, saying:
"Sit still now."
I sat for a long, long time watching him as he scraped a filed piece of copper, put it through a press, from under which the filings fell, like golden groats, on to a piece of cardboard. These he gathered up in the palm of his hand and shook them into a bulging vessel, to which he added white dust, like salt, which he took from a small bowl, and some fluid out of a dark bottle. The mixture in the vessel immediately began to hiss and to smoke, and a biting smell rose to my nostrils which caused me to cough violently.
"Ah!" said the wizard in a boastful tone. "That smells nasty, does n't it?"
"Yes!"
"That's right! That shows that it has turned out well, my boy."
"What is there to boast about?" I said to myself; and aloud I remarked severely:
"If it is nasty it can't have turned out well."
"Really!" he exclaimed, with a wink. "That does not always follow, my boy. However-- Do you play knuckle-bones?"
"You mean dibs?"
"That's it."
"Yes."
"Would you like me to make you a thrower?"
"Very well,