My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [72]
And then on vodka will carouse."
At night, when I lay in bed beside grandmother, I used to repeat to her, till I was weary, all that I had learned out of books, and all that I had composed myself. Sometimes she giggled, but more often she gave me a lecture.
"There now! You see what you can do. But it is not right to make fun of beggars, God bless them! Christ lived in poverty, and so did all the saints."
I murmured:
"Paupers I hate,
Grandfather too.
It's sad to relate,
Pardon me, God!
Grandfather beats me
Whenever he can."
"What are you talking about? I wish your tongue may drop out!" cried grandmother angrily. "If grandfather could hear what you are saying--"
"He can hear if he likes."
"You are very wrong to be so saucy; it only makes your mother angry, and she has troubles enough without you," said grandmother gravely and kindly.
"What is the matter with her?"
"Never mind! You would n't understand."
"I know! It is because grandfather--"
"Hold your tongue, I tell you!"
My lot was a hard one, for I was desperately trying to find a kindred spirit, but as I was anxious that no one should know of this, I took refuge in being saucy and disagreeable. The lessons with my mother became gradually more distasteful and more difficult to me. I easily mastered arithmetic, but I had not the patience to learn to write, and as for grammar, it was quite unintelligible to me.
But what weighed upon me most of all was the fact, which I both saw and felt, that it was very hard for mother to go on living in grandfather's house. Her expression became more sullen every day; she seemed to look upon everything with the eyes of a stranger. She used to sit for a long time together at the window overlooking the garden, saying nothing, and all her brilliant coloring seemed to have faded.
In lesson-time her deep-set eyes seemed to look right through me, at the wall, or at the window, as she asked me questions in a weary voice, and straightway forgot the answers; and she flew into rages with me much oftener--which hurt me, for mothers ought to behave better than any one else, as they do in stories.
Sometimes I said to her:
"You do not like living with us, do you?"
"Mind your own business!" she would cry angrily.
It began to dawn upon me that grandfather was up to something which worried grandmother and mother. He often shut himself up with mother in her room, and there we heard him wailing and squeaking like the wooden pipe of Nikanora, the one-sided shepherd, which always affected me so unpleasantly. Once when one of these conversations was going on, mother shrieked so that every one in the house could hear her:
"I won't have it! I won't!"
And a door banged--and grandfather set up a howl.
This happened in the evening. Grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table making a shirt for grandfather and whispering to herself. When the door banged, she said, listening intently:
"O Lord! she has gone up to the lodgers."
At this moment grandfather burst into the kitchen, and rushing up to grandmother, gave her a blow on the head, and hissed as he shook his bruised fist at her:
"Don't you go chattering about things there 's no need to talk about, you old hag!"
"You are an old fool!" retorted grandmother quietly, as she put her knocked-about hair straight. "Do you think I am going to keep quiet? I 'll tell her everything I know about your plots always."
He threw himself upon her and struck at her large head with his fists.
Making no attempt to defend herself, or to strike him back, she said:
"Go on! Beat me, you silly fool! . . . That's right! Hit me!"
I threw cushions and blankets at him from the couch, and the boots which were round the stove, but he was in such a frenzy of rage that he did not heed them. Grandmother fell to the floor and he kicked her head, till he finally stumbled and fell down himself, overturning a pailful of water. He jumped up spluttering and snorting, glanced wildly round, and rushed away to his own room in the attic.
Grandmother rose with a sigh, sat down on the bench, and began