My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [67]
"Wha--at? Wha--at?"
Grandmother offered them all tea in the kitchen, where, sitting at the table, was a rotund, whiskered individual, marked with smallpox, who was saying in a shrill voice:
"His real name we don't know ... all that we can find out is that his birthplace was Elatma. As for the Deaf Mute . . . that is only a nickname . . . he was not deaf and dumb at all . . . he knew all about the business. . . . And there's a third man in it too ... we 've got to find him yet. They have been robbing churches for a long time; that was their lay."
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Petrovna, very red, and perspiring profusely.
As for me, I lay on the ledge of the stove and looked down on them, and thought how short and fat and dreadful they all were.
CHAPTER X
EARLY one Saturday morning I made my way to Petrovna's kitchen-garden to catch robins. I was there a long time, because the pert red-breasts refused to go into the trap; tantalizingly beautiful, they hopped playfully over the silvery frozen snow, and flew on to the branches of the frost-covered bushes, scattering the blue snow-crystals all about. It was such a pretty sight that I forgot my vexation at my lack of success; in fact, I was not a very keen sportsman, for I took more pleasure in the incidents of the chase than in its results, and my greatest delight was to observe the ways of the birds and think about them. I was quite happy sitting alone on the edge of a snowy field listening to the birds chirping in the crystal stillness of the frosty day, when, faintly, in the distance, I heard the fleeting sounds of the bells of a troika--like the melancholy song of a skylark in the Russian winter. I was benumbed by sitting in the snow, and I felt that my ears were frost-bitten, so I gathered up the trap and the cages, climbed over the wall into grandfather's garden, and made my way to the house.
The gate leading to the street was open, and a man of colossal proportions was leading three steaming horses, harnessed to a large, closed sledge, out of the yard, whistling merrily the while. My heart leaped.
"Whom have you brought here?"
He turned and looked at me from under his arms, and jumped on to the driver's seat before he replied:
"The priest."
But I was not convinced; and if it was the priest, he must have come to see one of the lodgers.
"Gee-up!" cried the driver, and he whistled gaily as he slashed at the horses with his reins.
The horses tore across the fields, and I stood looking after them; then I closed the gate. The first thing I heard as I entered the empty kitchen was my mother's energetic voice in the adjoining room, saying very distinctly:
"What is the matter now? Do you want to kill me?"
Without taking off my outdoor clothes, I threw down the cages and ran into the vestibule, where I collided with grandfather; he seized me by the shoulder, looked into my face with wild eyes, and swallowing with difficulty, said hoarsely:
"Your mother has come back ... go to her . . . wait . . .!" He shook me so hard that I was nearly taken off my feet, and reeled against the door of the room. "Go on! . . . Go ...!"
I knocked at the door, which was protected by felt and oilcloth, but it was some time before my hand, benumbed with cold, and trembling with nervousness, found the latch; and when at length I softly entered, I halted on the threshold, dazed and bewildered.
"Here he is!" said mother. "Lord! how big he is grown. Why, don't you know me? . . . What a way you 've dressed him! . . . And, yes, his ears are going white! Make haste, Mama, and get some goose-grease."
She stood in the middle of the room, bending over me as she took off my outdoor clothes, and turning me about as if I were nothing more than a ball; her massive figure was clothed in a warm, soft, beautiful dress, as full as a man's cloak, which was fastened by black buttons, running obliquely from the shoulder to the hem of the skirt. I had never seen anything like it before.
Her face seemed smaller than it used to be, and her eyes larger and more sunken; while her hair seemed to be of a deeper gold.