My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [97]
Before I had time to look about my new home grandmother arrived with mother and the baby. My stepfather had been dismissed from the works for pilfering from the workmen, but he had gone after other employment and had been taken on in the bookingoffice of the railway station almost at once.
After a long, uneventful period, once more I was living with mother in the basement of a storehouse. As soon as she was settled mother sent me to school-- and from the very first I took a dislike to it.
I went thither in mother's shoes, with a coat made out of a bodice belonging to grandmother, a yellow shirt, and trousers which had been lengthened. My attire immediately became an object of ridicule, and for the yellow shirt I received "The ace of diamonds."
I soon became friendly with the boys, but the master and the priest did not like me.
The master was a jaundiced-looking, bold man who suffered from a continuous bleeding of the nose; he
MOTHER SENT ME TO SCHOOL--AND FROM THE FIRST I TOOK A DISLIKE
used to appear in the schoolroom with his nostrils stopped up with cotton-wool, and as he sat at his table, asking us questions in snuffling tones, he would suddenly stop in the middle of a word, take the wool out of his nostrils and look at it, shaking his head. He had a flat, copper-colored face, with a sour expression, and there was a greenish tint in his wrinkles; but it was his literally pewter-colored eyes which were the most hideous feature of it, and they were so unpleasantly glued to my face that I used to feel that I must brush them off my cheek with my hands.
For several days I was in the first division, and at the top of the class, quite close to the master's table, and my position was almost unbearable. He seemed to see no one but me, and he was snuffling all the time:
"Pyesh--kov, you must put on a clean shirt. Pyesh--kov, don't make a noise with your feet. Pyesh--kov, your bootlaces are undone again."
But I paid him out for his savage insolence. One day I took the half of a frozen watermelon, cut out the inside, and fastened it by a string over a pulley on the outer door. When the door opened the melon went up, but when my teacher shut the door the hollow melon descended upon his bald head like a cap. The janitor was sent with me with a note to the headmaster's house, and I paid for my prank with my own skin.
Another time I sprinkled snuff over his table, and he sneezed so much that he had to leave the class and send his brother-in-law to take his place. This was an officer who set the class singing: "God save the Czar!" and "Oh, Liberty! my Liberty!" Those who did not sing in tune he rapped over the head with a ruler, which made a funny, hollow noise, but it hurt.
The Divinity teacher, the handsome, young, luxuriant-haired priest, did not like me because I had no Bible, and also because I mocked his way of speaking. The first thing he did when he entered the classroom was to ask me:
"Pyeshkov, have you brought that book or not? Yes. The book!"
"No," I answered, "I have not brought it. Yes."
"What do you mean--yes?"
"No."
"Well, you can just go home. Yes--home, for I don't intend to teach you. Yes! I don't intend to do it."
This did not trouble me much. I went out and kicked my heels in the dirty village street till the end of the lesson, watching the noisy life about me.
This priest had a beautiful face, like a Christ, with caressing eyes like a woman's, and little hands--gentle, like everything about him. Whatever he handled-- a book, a ruler, a penholder, whatever it might be-- he handled carefully, as if it were alive and very fragile, and as if he loved it and were afraid of spoiling it by touching it. He was not quite so gentle with the children, but all the same they loved him.
Notwithstanding the fact that I learned tolerably well, I was soon told that I should be expelled from the school for unbecoming conduct. I became depressed, for I saw a very unpleasant time coming, as mother was growing more irritable every day, and beat me more than ever.
But help was at