My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [90]
But I would not listen to her; in fact the very sight of grown-up people affected me unpleasantly now. In the garden the light green spikes of young grass were already pushing their way through, the buds on the apple trees were swelling and ready to break, the moss on the roof of Petrovna's cottage was very pleasing to the eye in its renewed green; all around were birds, and sounds of joy, and the fresh, fragrant air caused a pleasant sensation of giddiness. By the pit, where Uncle Peter cut his throat, there was long grass-- red, and mixed up with the broken snow. I did not like looking at it; there was nothing spring-like about it. The black chimney-stack reared itself up dejectedly, and the whole pit was an unnecessary eyesore. I was seized with an angry desire to tear up and break off the long grass, to pull the chimney-stack to pieces brick by brick, and get rid of all that useless muck, and to build a clean dwelling for myself in the pit, where I could live all the summer without grown-up people.
I had no sooner thought of it than I set myself to do it, and it immediately diverted my mind from what went on in the house, and kept it occupied for a long time; and although many things occurred to upset me, they became of less importance to me every day.
"What are you sulking about?" mother and grandmother used to ask me; and it made me feel awkward when they asked this question, for I was not angry with them--it was simply that every one in the house had become a stranger to me. At dinner, at evening tea, and supper the old, green woman often appeared --looking just like a rotten paling in an old fence. The eyes seemed to be sewn on her face with invisible threads, and looked as if they would easily roll out of their bony sockets, as she turned them rapidly in every direction, seeing and taking notes of everything--raising them to the ceiling when she talked of God, and looking down her nose when she spoke of household matters. Her eyebrows looked exactly as if they had been cut out of pieces and stuck on. Her large, protruding teeth noiselessly chewed whatever she put in her mouth with a funny curve of her arm, and her little finger stuck out; while the bones about her ears moved like little round balls, and the green hairs on her warts went up and down as if they were creeping along her yellow, wrinkled, disgustingly clean skin.
She was always so very clean--like her son, and it was unpleasant to go near them. The first day she put her dead hand against my lips, it smelled strongly of yellow Kazan soap and incense, and I turned away and ran off. She said to her son very often:
"That boy is greatly in need of discipline; do you understand that, Jenia?"
Inclining his head obediently, he would frown and remain silent. Every one frowned in the presence of the green woman.
I hated the old woman, and her son too, with an intense hatred, and many blows did that feeling cost me. One day at dinner she said, rolling her eyes horribly:
"Oh--Aleshenka, why do you eat in such a hurry, and take such big pieces? Give it up, my dear!"
I took the piece out of my mouth, put it on the fork again, and handed it to her.
"Take it--only it is hot."
Mother took me away from the table, and I was ignominiously banished to the attic, where grandmother joined me, trying to keep her giggling from being heard by placing her hand over her mouth.
"Lor! you are a cheeky young monkey. Bless you!"
It irritated me to see her with her hand over her mouth, so I ran away, climbed on the roof of the house, and sat there a long time by the chimney. Yes, I wanted to be insolent and to use injurious words to them all, and it was hard to fight against this feeling, but it had to be fought against.
One day I covered the chair of my future stepfather with grease, and that of my new grandmother with cherry-gum, and they both stuck to their seats; it was very funny, but when grandfather had hit me, mother came up to me in the attic, and drawing me to her, pressed me against her knees saying:
"Listen now! Why are you so ill-natured? If you only knew