My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [81]
One evening, when I was convalescent, and lay without bandages, except for my hands, which were tied up to prevent me from scratching my face, grandmother, for some reason or other, had not come at her usual time, which alarmed me; and all of a sudden I saw her. She was lying outside the door on the dusty floor of the attic, face downwards, with her arms outspread, and her neck half sawed through, like Uncle Peter's; while from the corner, out of the dusty twilight, there moved slowly towards her a great cat, with its green eyes greedily open. I sprang out of bed, bruising my legs and shoulders against the window-frame, and jumped down into the yard into a snowdrift. It happened to be an evening when mother had visitors, so no one heard the smashing of the glass, or the breaking of the window-frame, and I had to lie in the snow for some time. I had broken no bones, but I had dislocated my shoulder and cut myself very much with the broken glass, and I had lost the use of my legs, and for three months I lay utterly unable to move. I lay still and listened, and thought how noisy the house had become, how often they banged the doors downstairs, and what a lot of people seemed to be coming and going.
1 In the year '90 in the village of Kolinpanovka, in the Government of Tambov, and the district Borisoglebsk, I heard another version of this legend, in which the knife kills the stepson who has calumniated his stepmother.
Heavy snowstorms swept over the roof; the wind came and went resoundingly outside the door, sang a funereal song down the chimney, and set the dampers rattling; by day the rooks cawed, and in the quiet night the doleful howling of wolves reached my ears--such was the music under whose influence my heart developed. Later on shy spring peeped into the window with the radiant eyes of the March sun, timidly and gently at first, but growing bolder and warmer every day; she-cats sang and howled on the roof and in the loft; the rustle of spring penetrated the very walls-- the crystal icicles broke, the half-thawed snow fell off the stable-roof, and the bells began to give forth a sound less clear than they gave in winter. When grandmother came near me her words were more often impregnated with the odor of vodka, which grew stronger every day, until at length she began to bring a large white teapot with her and hide it under my bed, saying with a wink:
"Don't you say anything to that grandfather of ours, will you, darling?"
"Why do you drink?"
"Never mind! When you are grown-up you'll know."
She pulled at the spout of the teapot, wiped her lips with her sleeve, and smiled sweetly as she" asked:
"Well, my little gentleman, what do you want me to tell you about this evening?"
"About my father."
"Where shall I begin?"
I reminded her, and her speech flowed on like a melodious stream for a long time.
She had begun to tell me about my father of her own accord one day when she had come to me, nervous, sad, and tired, saying:
"I have had a dream about your father. I thought I saw him coming across the fields, whistling, and followed by a piebald dog with its tongue hanging out. For some reason I have begun to dream about Maxim Savatyevitch very often ... it must mean that his soul is not at rest . . ."
For several evenings in succession she told me my father's history, which was interesting, as all her stories were.
My father was the son of a soldier who had worked his way up to be an officer and was banished to Siberia for cruelty to his subordinates; and there--somewhere in Siberia--my father was born. He had an unhappy life, and at a very early age he used to run away from home. Once grandfather set the dogs to track him down in the forest, as if he were a hare; another time, having caught him, he beat him so unmercifully that the neighbors took the child away and hid him.
"Do they always beat children?" I asked, and grandmother answered quietly:
"Always."
My father's mother died early, and when he was nine years old grandfather also died, and