My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [88]
One day, as he stood in the middle of the room, staring at the floor, he said softly:
"Mother?"
"Aye?"
"You see what is going on?"
"Yes, I see!"
"What do you think of it?"
"There 'll be a wedding, Father. Do you remember how you used to talk about a nobleman?"
"Yes."
"Well--here he is!"
"He 's got nothing."
"That's her business."
Grandfather left the room, and conscious of a sense of uneasiness, I asked:
"What were you talking about?"
"You want to know everything," she replied querulously, rubbing my feet. "If you know everything when you are young, there will be nothing to ask questions about when you get old." And she laughed and shook her head at me.
"Oh, grandfather! grandfather! you are nothing but a little piece of dust in the eyes of God. Lenka --now don't you tell any one this, but grandfather is absolutely ruined. He lent a certain gentleman a large sum of money, and now the gentleman has gone bankrupt."
Smiling, she fell into a reverie, and sat without speaking for a long time; and her face became wrinkled, and sad, and gloomy.
"What are you thinking about?"
"I am thinking of something to tell you," she answered, with a start. "Shall we have the story about Evstignia? Will that do? Well, here goes then.
"A deacon there was called Evstignla,
He thought there was no one more wise than he,
Be he presbyter, or be he boyard;
Not even a huntsman knew more than he.
Like a spike of spear grass he held himself,
So proud, and taught his neighbors great and small;
He found fault with this, and grumbled at that;
He glanced at a church--'Not lofty enough!'
He passed up a street--'How narrow!' he said.
An apple he plucked--'It not red!' he said.
The sun rose too soon for Evstignia!
In all the world there was nothing quite right!"
Grandmother puffed out her cheeks, and rolled her eyes; her kind face assumed a stupid, comical expression as she went on in a lazy, dragging voice:
"'There is nothing I could not do myself,
And do it much better, I think,' he said,
'If I only had a little more time!'"
She was smilingly silent for a moment, and then she continued:
"To the deacon one night some devils came;
'So you find it dull here, deacon?' they said.
'Well, come along with us, old fellow, to hell,
You 'll have no fault to find with the fires there.'
Ere the wise deacon could put on his hat
The devils seized hold of him with their paws
And, with titters and howls, they dragged him down.
A devil on each of his shoulders sat,
And there, in the flames of hell they set him.
'Is it all right, Evstignyeushka T
The deacon was roasting, brightly he burned,
Kept himself up with his hands to his sides,
Puffed out his lips as he scornfully said:
'It's dreadfully smoky down here--in hell!'"
Concluding in an indolent, low-pitched, unctuous voice, she changed her expression and, laughing quietly, explained:
"He would not give in--that Evstignia, but stuck to his own opinion obstinately, like our grandfather. . . . That's enough now; go to sleep; it is high time."
Mother came up to the attic to see me very seldom, and she did not stay long, and spoke as if she were in a hurry. She was getting more beautiful, and was dressed better every day, but I was conscious of something different about her, as about grandmother; I felt that there was something going on which was being kept from me--and I tried to guess what it was.
Grandmother's stories interested me less and less, even the ones she told me about my father; and they did not soothe my indefinable but daily increasing alarm.
"Why is my father's soul not at rest?" I asked grandmother.
"How can I tell?" she replied, covering her eyes. "That is God's affair ... it is supernatural . . . and hidden from us."
At night, as I gazed sleeplessly through the dark blue windows at the stars floating so slowly across the sky, I made up some sad story in my mind--in which the chief place was occupied by my father, who was always wandering about alone, with a stick in his hand, and with a shaggy dog behind him.
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