My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [92]
"What are you learning?" I asked.
"Surveying," he replied.
I did not trouble to ask what surveying was. The house seemed to be full of a dull quietness; there was a woolly sort of rustling going on, and I wished that the night would make haste and come. Grandfather stood with his back pressed against the stove, gazing out of the window with a frown. The old green woman was helping mother to pack, grumbling and sighing; and grandmother, who had been tipsy since noon, ashamed on that account, had retired to the attic and shut herself up there.
Mother went away early the next morning. She held me in her arms as she took leave of me; lifting me lightly off the ground, and gazing into my eyes with eyes which seemed unfamiliar to me, she said as she kissed me:
"Well--good-by."
"Tell him that he has got to obey me," said grandfather gruffly, looking up at the sky which was still rosy.
"Do what grandfather tells you," said mother, making the sign of the Cross over me.
I expected her to say something else, and I was furious with grandfather because he had prevented her.
They seated themselves in the droshky, and mother was a long time angrily trying to free her skirt which had got caught in something.
"Help her, can't you? Are you blind?" said grandfather to me.
But I could not help--I was too wrapped up in my grief.
Maximov patiently squeezed his long legs, clothed in dark blue trousers, into the droshky, while grandmother put some bundles into his hand. He piled them up on his knees,and keeping them in place with his chin, his white face wrinkled with embarrassment, he drawled: "That's eno--ugh!"
In another droshky sat the old green woman with her eldest son, the officer, who was scratching his beard with his sword handle, and yawning.
"So you are going to the war?" said grandfather.
"I am compelled to go."
"A good thing too! ... we must beat the Turks."
They drove off. Mother turned round several times and waved her handkerchief. Grandmother, dissolved in tears, supporting herself by resting her hand against the wall, also waved her hand. Grandfather wiped away the tears from his eyes and muttered brokenly: "No good--will come--of this."
I sat on the gate-post and watched the droshky jolting up and down--and then they turned the corner and
it seemed as if a door in my heart had been suddenly \ shut and barred. It was very early, the shutters had not been taken from the windows of the houses, the street was empty; I had never seen such an utter absence of life. In the distance the shepherd could be heard playing irritatingly.
"Come in to breakfast," said grandfather, taking me by the shoulder. "It is evident that your lot is to live with me; so you are beginning to leave your mark on me like the striking of a match leaves on a brick."
From morning till night we busied ourselves in the garden; he laid out beds, tied up the raspberry bushes, stripped the lichen off the apple trees, and killed the caterpillars, while I went on building and decorating my dwelling. Grandfather cut off the end of the burnt beam, made sticks out of it, and stuck them in the earth, and I hung my bird-cages on them; then I wove a close netting with the dried grass, and made a canopy over the seat to keep off the sun and the dew. The result was very satisfactory.
"It is very useful," said grandfather, "for you to learn how to make the best of things for yourself."
I attached great importance to his words. Sometimes he lay down on the seat, which I had covered with turf, and taught me, very slowly, as if he had a difficulty in finding words.
"Now you are cut right off from your mother; other children will come to her, and they will be more to her than you are. And grandmother there--she has taken to drink."
He was silent for a long time as if he were listening to something; then again he unwillingly let fall gloomy words:
"This is the second time she has taken to drink; when Michael went for a soldier she started to drink too. And the old fool persuaded me to buy his discharge. . . . He might have turned out quite differently