The Man Who Was Afraid [10]
The boy knew that his godfather spoke of the man from the land of Uz, and the godfather's smile soothed the child. So the man would not break the sky; he would not rend it asunder with his terrible arms. And then Foma sees the man again--he sits on the ground, "his flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust, his skin is broken." But now he is small and wretched, he is like a beggar at the church porch.
Here he says:
"What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of woman, that he should be righteous?" [These words attributed by Mayakin to Job are from Eliphaz the Temanite's reply-- Translator's Note.]
"He says this to God," explained Mayakin, inspired. "How, says he, can I be righteous, since I am made of flesh? That's a question asked of God. How is that?"
And the reader, triumphantly and interrogatively looks around at his listeners.
"He merited it, the righteous man," they replied with a sigh.
Yakov Mayakin eyes them with a smile, and says:
"Fools! You better put the children to sleep."
Ignat visited the Mayakins every day, brought playthings for his son, caught him up into his arms and hugged him, but sometimes dissatisfied he said to him with ill-concealed uneasiness:
"Why are you such a bugbear? Oh! Why do you laugh so little?"
And he would complain to the lad's godfather:
"I am afraid that he may turn out to be like his mother. His eyes are cheerless."
"You disturb yourself rather too soon," Mayakin smilingly replied.
He, too, loved his godson, and when Ignat announced to him one day that he would take Foma to his own house, Mayakin was very much grieved.
"Leave him here," he begged. "See, the child is used to us; there! he's crying."
"He'll cease crying. I did not beget him for you. The air of the place is disagreeable. It is as tedious here as in an old believer's hermitage. This is harmful to the child. And without him I am lonesome. I come home--it is empty. I can see nothing there. It would not do for me to remove to your house for his sake. I am not for him, he is for me. So. And now that my sister has come to my house there will be somebody to look after him."
And the boy was brought to his father's house.
There he was met by a comical old woman, with a long, hook-like nose and with a mouth devoid of teeth. Tall, stooping, dressed in gray, with gray hair, covered by a black silk cap, she did not please the boy at first; she even frightened him. But when he noticed on the wrinkled face her black eyes, which beamed so tenderly on him, he at once pressed his head close to her knees in confidence.
"My sickly little orphan!" she said in a velvet-like voice that trembled from the fulness of sound, and quietly patted his face with her hand, "stay close to me, my dear child!"
There was something particularly sweet and soft in her caresses, something altogether new to Foma, and he stared into the old woman's eyes with curiosity and expectation on his face. This old woman led him into a new world, hitherto unknown to him. The very first day, having put him to bed, she seated herself by his side, and, bending over the child, asked him:
"Shall I tell you a story, Fomushka?"
And after that Foma always fell asleep amid the velvet-like sounds of the old woman's voice, which painted before him a magic life. Giants defeating monsters, wise princesses, fools who turned out to be wise--troops of new and wonderful people were passing before the boy's bewitched imagination, and his soul was nourished by the wholesome beauty of the national creative power. Inexhaustible were the treasures of the memory and the fantasy of this old woman, who oftentimes, in slumber, appeared to the boy-- now like the witch of the fairy-tales--only a kind and amiable old witch--now like the beautiful, all-wise Vasilisa. His eyes wide open, holding his breath, the boy looked into the darkness that filled his chamber and watched it as it slowly trembled in the light of the little lamp that was burning before the image. And Foma filled this darkness with wonderful pictures