My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [64]
He whispered like this for a long time, and all sore from my beating as I was, I was inclined to listen to him at first; but his wrinkled face quivered in a way which became more and more repellent to me every moment, and reminded me that the other boys would be beaten too, and undeservedly, in my opinion.
"They ought not to be whipped; they are all good boys. As for you, every word you say is a lie," I said.
He looked at me, and then without any warning cried:
"Get out of my cart!"
"You fool!" I yelled, jumping down to the ground.
He ran after me across the yard, making unsuccessful attempts to catch me, and yelling in an uncanny voice:
"I am a fool, am I? I tell lies, do I? You wait till I get you!"
At this moment grandmother came out of the kitchen, and I rushed to her.
"This little wretch gives me no peace! I am five times older than he is, yet he dares to come and revile me . . . and my mother . . . and all."
Hearing him lie like this so brazenly, I lost my presence of mind, and could do nothing but stand staring at him stupidly; but grandmother replied sternly:
"Now you are telling lies, Peter, there is no doubt about it. He would never be offensive to you or any one."
Grandfather would have believed the drayman!
From that day there was silent but none the less bitter warfare between us; he would try to hit me with his reins, without seeming to do it, he would let my birds out of their cage, and sometimes the cat would catch and eat them, and he would complain about me to grandfather on every possible occasion, and was always believed. I was confirmed in my first impression of him--that he was just a boy like myself disguised as an old man. I unplaited his bast shoes, or rather I ripped a little inside the shoes so that as soon as he put them on they began to fall to pieces; one day I put some pepper in his cap which set him sneezing for a whole hour, and trying with all his might not to leave off his work because of it.
On Sundays he kept me under observation, and more than once he caught me doing what was forbidden--talking to the Ovsyanikovs, and went and told tales to grandfather.
My acquaintance with the Ovsyanikovs progressed, and gave me increasing pleasure. On a little winding pathway between the wall of grandfather's house and the Ovsyanikovs' fence grew elms and lindens, with some thick elder bushes, under cover of which I bored a semicircular hole in the fence, and the brothers used to come in turns, or perhaps two of them together, and, squatting or kneeling at this hole, we held long conversations in subdued tones; while one of them watched lest the Colonel should come upon us unawares.
They told me how miserable their existence was, and it made me sad to listen to them; they talked about my caged birds, and of many childish matters, but they never spoke a single word about their stepmother or their father, at least, as far as I can remember. More often than not they asked me to tell them a story, and I faithfully reproduced one of grandmother's tales, and if I forgot anything, I would ask them to wait while I ran to her and refreshed my memory. This pleased her.
I told them a lot about grandmother, and the eldest boy remarked once with a deep sigh:
"Your grandmother seems to be good in every way. . . . We had a good grandmother too, once."
He often spoke sadly like this, and spoke of things which had happened as if he had lived a hundred years instead of eleven. I remember that his hands were narrow, and his fingers very slender and delicate, and that his eyes were kind and bright, like the lights of the church lamps. His brothers were lovable too; they seemed to inspire confidence and to make one want to do the things they liked; but the eldest one was my favorite.
Often I was so absorbed in our conversations that I did not notice Uncle Peter till he was close upon us, and the sound of his voice sent us flying in all directions as he exclaimed:
"A--gai--nV
I noticed that his fits of taciturnity and