My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [61]
Before me rose the round, hairless, childlike face of the gentleman, and I remembered how he had squeaked feebly and plaintively, just like the puppies, as he had wiped his yellow pate with his small hands, and I felt overwhelmed with shame, and full of hatred for my cousins; but I forgot all this in a moment when I gazed on the drayman's wrinkled face, which quivered with a half-fearful, half-disgusted expression, like grandfather's face when he was beating me.
"Go away!" I shrieked, and struck at him with my hands and feet.
He tittered, and winking at me over his shoulder, went away.
From that time I ceased to have any desire for intercourse with him; in fact, I avoided him. And yet I began to watch his movements suspiciously, with a confused idea that I should discover something about him. Soon after the incident connected with the gentleman of Betlenga House, something else occurred. For a long time I had been very curious about Ovsyanikov House, and I imagined that its gray exterior hid a mysterious romance.
Betlenga House was always full of bustle and gaiety; many beautiful ladies lived there, who were visited by officers and students, and from it sounds of laughter and singing, and the playing of musical instruments, continually proceeded. The very face of the house looked cheerful, with its brightly polished window-panes.
Grandfather did not approve of it.
"They are heretics . . . and godless people, all of them!" he said about its inhabitants, and he applied to the women an offensive term, which Uncle Peter explained to me in words equally offensive and malevolent.
But the stern, silent Ovsyanikov House inspired grandfather with respect.
This one-storied but tall house stood in a well-kept yard overgrown with turf, empty save for a well with a roof supported by two pillars, which stood in the middle. The house seemed to draw back from the street as if it wished to hide from it. Two of its windows, which had chiselled arches, were at some distance from the ground, and upon their dustsmeared panes the sun fell with a rainbow effect. And on tht other side of the gateway stood a storehouse, with a fagade exactly like that of the house, even to the three windows, but they were not real ones; the outlines were built into the gray wall, and the frames and sashes painted on with white paint. These blind windows had a sinister appearance, and the whole storehouse added to the impression which the house gave, of having a desire to hide and escape notice. There was a suggestion of mute indignation, or of secret pride, about the whole house, with its empty stables, and its coachhouse, with wide doors, also empty.
Sometimes a tall old man, with shaven chin and white mustache, the hair of which stuck out stiffly like so many needles, was to be seen hobbling about the yard. At other times another old man, with whiskers and a crooked nose, led out of the stables a gray mare with a long neck--a narrow-chested creature with thin legs, which bowed and scraped like an obsequious nun as soon as she came out into the yard. The lame man slapped her with his palms, whistling, and drawing in his breath noisily; and then the mare was again hidden in the dark stable. I used to think that the old man wanted to run away from the house, but could not because he was bewitched.
Almost every day from noon till the evening three boys used to play in the yard all dressed alike in gray coats and trousers, with caps exactly alike, and all of them with round faces and gray eyes; so much alike that I could only tell one from the other by their height.
I used to watch them through a chink in the fence; they could not see me, but I wanted them to know I was there. I liked the way they played together, so gaily and amicably, games which were unfamiliar to me; I liked their dress, and their consideration for each other, which was especially noticeable in the conduct of the elder ones to their little brother, a funny little fellow, full of life. If he fell down, they laughed--it being the custom