SHROVE TUESDAY
“Here, Pavel, Pavel!” Pelagia Ivanovna cried, rousing her husband from a nap. “Do go and help Stepa! He is sitting there crying again over his lessons. It must be something he can’t understand.”
Pavel Vasilitch got up, made the sign of the cross over his yawning mouth, and said meekly:
“Very well, dear.”
The cat sleeping beside him also jumped up, stretched its tail in the air, arched its back, and half-closed its eyes. The mice could be heard scuttling behind the hangings. Having put on his slippers and dressing-gown, Pavel Vasilitch passed into the dining-room all ruffled and heavy with sleep. A second cat that had been sniffing at a plate of cold fish on the window-sill jumped to the floor as he entered, and hid in the cupboard.
“Who told you to go smelling that?” Pavel Vasilitch cried with vexation, covering the fish with a newspaper. “You’re more of a pig than a cat!”
A door led from the dining-room into the nursery. There, at a table disfigured with deep gouges and stains, sat Stepa, a schoolboy of ten with tearful eyesand a petulant face. He was hugging his knees to his chin and swaying backward and forward like a Chinese idol with his eyes fixed angrily on the schoolbook before him.
“So you’re learning your lessons, eh?” asked Pavel Vasilitch, yawning and taking his seat at the table beside him. “That’s the way, sonny. You’ve had your play and your nap, and you’ve eaten your pancakes, and to-morrow will be Lent, a time of repentance; so now you’re at work. The happiest day must have an end. What do those tears mean? Are your lessons getting the better of you? It’s hard to do lessons after eating pancakes! That’s what ails you, little sonny!”
“Why do you laugh at the child?” calls Pelagia Ivanovna from the next room. “Show him how to do his lessons, instead of making fun of him! Oh, what a trial he is! He’ll be sure to get a bad mark to-morrow!”
“What is it you don’t understand?” asked Pavel Vasilitch of Stepa.
“This here, how to divide these fractions,” the boy answered crossly. “The division of fractions by fractions.”
“H’m, you little pickle, that’s easy, there’s nothing about it to understand. You must do the sum right, that’s all. To divide one fraction by another you multiply the numerator of the first by the denominator of the second in order to get the numerator of thequotient. Very well. Now the denominator of the first——”
“I know that already!” Stepa interrupted him, flicking a nutshell off the table. “Show me an example.”
“An example? Very well, let me have a pencil. Now, then, listen to me. Supposing that we want to divide seven-eighths by two-fifths. Very well, then the proposition is this: we want to divide these two fractions by one another—Is the samovar boiling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because it’s eight o’clock and time for tea. Very well, now listen to me. Supposing that we divide seven-eighths not by two-fifths, but by two, that is by the numerator only. What is the answer?”
“Seven-sixteenths.”
“Splendid! Good boy! Now, then, sonny, the trick is this: as we have divided—let me see—as we have divided it by two, of course—wait a minute, I’m getting muddled myself. I remember when I was a boy at school we had a Polish arithmetic master named Sigismund Urbanitch, who used to get muddled over every lesson. He would suddenly lose his wits while he was in the midst of demonstrating a proposition, blush to the roots of his hair, and rush about the classroom as if the devil were after him. Then he would blow his nose four or five times and burst into tears. But we were generous to him, we used to pretend notto notice it, and would ask him whether he had the toothache. And yet we were a class of pirates, of cutthroats, I can tell you, but, as you see, we were generous. We boys weren’t puny like you when I was a youngster; we were great big chaps, you never saw such great strapping fellows! There was Mamakin, for instance, in the third grade. Lord! What a giant he was! Why, that colossus was seven feet high! The whole house shook when he walked across the floor and he would knock the breath out of your body if he laid his hand on your shoulder. Not only we boys, but even the masters feared him. Why Mamakin would sometimes——”
Pelagia Ivanovna’s footsteps resounded in the next room. Pavel Vasilitch winked at the door and whispered:
“Mother’s coming, let’s get to work! Very well, then, sonny,” he continued, raising his voice. “We want to divide this fraction by that one. All right. To do that we must multiply the numerator of the first by——”
“Come in to tea!” called Pelagia Ivanovna.
Father and son left their arithmetic and went in to tea. Pelagia Ivanovna was already seated at the dining-table with the silent aunt and another aunt who was deaf and dumb and old granny Markovna, who had assisted Stepa into the world. The samovar was hissing and emitting jets of steam that settled in large, dark shadows upon the ceiling. The cats camein from the hall, sleepy, melancholy, their tails standing straight up in the air.
“Do have some preserves with your tea, Markovna!” said Pelagia Ivanovna turning to the old dame. “To-morrow will be Lent, so you must eat all you can.”
Markovna helped herself to a large spoonful of jam, raised it to her lips, and swallowed it with a sidelong glance at Pavel Vasilitch. Next moment a sweet smile broke over her face, a smile almost as sweet as the jam itself.
“These preserves are perfectly delicious!” she exclaimed. “Did you make them yourself, Pelagia Ivanovna, dearie?”
“Yes, of course, who else could have made them? I do everything myself. Stepa, darling, was your tea too weak for you? Mercy, you’ve finished it already! Come, hand me your cup, sweetheart, and let me give you some more.”
“That young Mamakin I was telling you about, sonny,” continued Pavel Vasilitch, turning to Stepa, “couldn’t abide our French teacher. ‘I’m a gentleman!’ he used to exclaim. ‘I won’t be lorded over by a Frenchman!’ Of course he used to be flogged for it, and badly flogged, too. When he knew he was in for a thrashing he used to jump through the window and take to his heels, not showing his nose in school after that for five or six days. Then his mother would go to the head master and beg him for pity’s sake to find her Mishka and give the scoundrel a thrashing, butthe head master used to say: ‘That’s all very well, madam, but no five of our men can hold that fellow!’”
“My goodness, what dreadful boys there are in the world!” whispered Pelagia Ivanovna, fixing terrified eyes on her husband. “His poor mother!”
A silence followed—Stepa yawned loudly as he contemplated the Chinaman on the tea-caddy whom he had seen at least a thousand times before. Markovna and the two aunts sipped their tea primly from their saucers. The air was close and oppressive with the heat of the stove. The lassitude that comes to the satiated body when it is forced to continue eating was depicted on the faces and in the movements of the family. The samovar had been taken away and the table had been cleared, but they still continued to sit about the board. Pelagia Ivanovna jumped up from time to time and ran into the kitchen with a look of horror on her face to confer with the cook about supper. The aunts both sat motionless in the same position, dozing with their hands folded on their chests and their lack-lustre eyes fixed on the lamp. Markovna kept hiccoughing every minute and asked each time:
“I wonder what makes me hiccough? I don’t know what I could have eaten or drunk—hick!”
Pavel Vasilitch and Stepa leaned over the table side by side with their heads together, poring over the pages of theNeva Magazinefor the year 1878.
“‘The monument to Leonardo da Vinci in front ofthe Victor Emmanuel Museum at Milan.’ Look at that, it’s like a triumphal arch! And there are a man and a lady, and there are some more little people——”
“That looks like one of the boys at our school,” Stepa said.
“Turn over the page—‘The Proboscis of the House Fly as Seen through the Microscope.’ Goodness what a fly! I wonder what a bedbug would look like under the microscope, eh? How disgusting!”
The ancient hall clock coughed rather than struck ten times, as if it were afflicted with a cold. Into the dining-room came Anna the cook and fell flop at her master’s feet.
“Forgive me my sins, master, for Christ’s sake!” she cried and got up again very red in the face.
“Forgive me mine, too, for Christ’s sake!” answered Pavel Vasilitch calmly.
Anna then fell down at the feet of every member of the family in turn and asked forgiveness for her sins, omitting only Markovna, who, not being high-born, was unworthy of a prostration.
Another half-hour passed in silence and peace. TheNevawas tossed aside onto the sofa and Pavel Vasilitch, with one finger raised aloft, was reciting Latin poetry he had learned in his youth. Stepa was watching his father’s finger with its wedding-ring and dozing as he listened to the words he could not understand. He rubbed his heavy eyes with his fist but they kept closing tighter and tighter each time.
“I’m going to bed!” he said at last, stretching and yawning.
“What? To bed?” cried Pelagia Ivanovna. “Won’t you eat your meat for the last time before Lent?”
“I don’t want any meat.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” his startled mother exclaimed. “How can you say that? You won’t have any meat after to-night for the whole of Lent!”
Pavel Vasilitch was startled, too.
“Yes, yes, sonny,” he cried. “Your mother will give you nothing but Lenten fare for seven weeks after to-night. This won’t do. You must eat your meat!”
“But I want to go to bed!” whimpered Stepa.
“Then bring in the supper quick!” cried Pavel Vasilitch in a flutter. “Anna, what are you doing in there, you old slow-coach? Come quick and bring in the supper!”
Pelagia Ivanovna threw up her hands and rushed into the kitchen as if the house were afire.
“Hurry! Hurry!” rang through the house. “Stepa wants to go to bed! Anna! Oh, heavens, what is the matter? Hurry!”
In five minutes the supper was on the table. The cats appeared once more, stretching and arching their backs, with their tails in the air. The family applied themselves to their meal. No one was hungry, all were surfeited to the point of bursting, but they felt it was their duty to eat.
IN PASSION WEEK
“Run, the church-bells are ringing! Be a good boy in church and don’t play! If you do, God will punish you!”
My mother slipped a few copper coins into my hand and then forgot all about me, as she ran into the kitchen with an iron that was growing cold. I knew I should not be allowed to eat or drink after confession, so before leaving home I choked down a crust of bread and drank two glasses of water. Spring was at its height. The street was a sea of brown mud through which ruts were already in process of being worn; the housetops and sidewalks were dry, and the tender young green of springtime was pushing up through last year’s dry grass under the fence rows. Muddy rivulets were babbling and murmuring down the gutters in which the sun did not disdain to lave its rays. Chips, bits of straw, and nutshells were floating swiftly down with the current, twisting and turning and catching on the dirty foam flakes. Whither, whither were they drifting? Would they not be swept from the gutter into the river, from the river into the sea, and from the sea into the mighty ocean? I tried topicture to myself the long and terrible journey before them, but my imagination failed even before reaching the river.
A cab drove by. The cabman was clucking to his horse and slapping the reins, unaware of two street-urchins hanging from the springs of his little carriage. I wanted to join these boys, but straightway remembered that I was on my way to confession, whereupon the boys appeared to me to be very wicked sinners indeed.
“God will ask them on the Last Judgment Day why they played tricks on a poor cabman,” I thought. “They will begin to make excuses, but the devil will grab them and throw them into eternal fire. But if they obey their fathers and mothers and give pennies and bread to the beggars, God will have mercy on them and will let them into Paradise.”
The church porch was sunny and dry. Not a soul was there; I opened the church door irresolutely and entered the building. There, in the dim light more fraught with melancholy and gloom for me than ever before, I became overwhelmed by the consciousness of my wickedness and sin. The first object that met my sight was a huge crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist on either side of the cross. The lustres and shutters were hung with mourning black, the icon lamps were glimmering faintly, and the sun seemed to be purposely avoiding the church windows. The Mother of God and the favourite Disciple weredepicted in profile silently gazing at that unutterable agony upon the cross, oblivious of my presence. I felt that I was a stranger to them, paltry and vile; that I could not help them by word or deed; that I was a horrid, worthless boy, fit only to chatter and be naughty and rough. I called to mind all my acquaintances, and they all seemed to me to be trivial and silly and wicked, incapable of consoling one atom the terrible grief before me. The murky twilight deepened, the Mother of God and John the Baptist seemed very lonely.
Behind the lectern where the candles were sold stood the old soldier Prokofi, now churchwarden’s assistant.
His eyebrows were raised and he was stroking his beard and whispering to an old woman.
“The service will begin directly after vespers this evening. There will be prayers after matins to-morrow at eight o’clock. Do you hear me? At eight o’clock.”
Between two large pillars near the rood-screen the penitents were standing in line waiting their turn for confession. Among them was Mitka, a ragged little brat with an ugly, shaven head, protruding ears, and small, wicked eyes. He was the son of Nastasia the washerwoman, and was a bully and a thief who filched apples from the fruit-stalls and had more than once made away with my knuckle-bones. He was now staring crossly at me and seemed to be exulting in the fact that he was going to confession before me. Myheart swelled with rage and I tried not to look at him. From the bottom of my soul I was furious that this boy’s sins were about to be forgiven.
In front of him stood a richly dressed lady with a white plume in her hat. Clearly she was deeply agitated and tensely expectant, and one of her cheeks was burning with a feverish flush.
I waited five minutes, ten minutes—then a well-dressed young man with a long, thin neck came out from behind the screen. He had on high rubber goloshes, and I at once began dreaming of the day when I should buy a pair of goloshes like his for myself. I decided that I would certainly do so. And now came the lady’s turn. She shuddered and went behind the screen.
Through a crack I could see her approach the altar, prostrate herself, rise, and bow her head expectantly without looking at the priest. The priest’s back was turned toward the screen, and all I could see of him was his broad shoulders, his curly grey hair, and the chain around his neck from which a cross was suspended. Sighing, without looking at the lady, he began nodding his head and whispering rapidly, now raising, now lowering his voice. The lady listened meekly, guiltily almost, with downcast eyes, and answered him in a few words.
“What can be her sin?” I wondered, looking reverently at her beautiful, gentle face. “Forgive her, God, and make her happy!”
But now the priest was covering her head with the stole.
“I, Thy unworthy servant,” his voice rang out, “by the power vouchsafed me, forgive this woman and absolve her from sin——”
The lady prostrated herself once more, kissed the cross, and retired. Both her cheeks were flushed now, but her face was calm, and unclouded, and joyous.
“She is happy now,” I thought, my eye wandering from her to the priest pronouncing the absolution. “But how happy he must be who is able to forgive sin!”
It was Mitka’s turn next, and my heart suddenly boiled over with hatred for the little thief. I wanted to go behind the screen ahead of him, I wanted to be first. Mitka noticed the movement, and hit me on the head with a candle. I paid him back in his own coin, and for a moment sounds of panting and the breaking of candles were heard in the church. We were forcibly parted, and my enemy nervously and stiffly approached the altar and bowed to the ground, but what happened after that I was unable to see. All I could think of was that I was going next, after Mitka, and at that thought the objects around me danced and swam before my eyes. Mitka’s protruding ears grew larger than ever and melted into the back of his neck, the priest swayed, and the floor rocked under my feet.
The priest’s voice rang out:
“I, Thy unworthy servant——”
I found myself moving toward the screen. My feet seemed to be treading on air. I felt as if I were floating. I reached the altar, which was higher than my head. The weary, dispassionate face of the priest flashed for a moment across my vision, but after that I saw only his blue-lined sleeves and one corner of the stole. I felt his near presence, smelled the odour of his cassock, and heard his stern voice, and the cheek that was turned toward him began to burn. I lost much of what he said from excitement, but I answered him earnestly, in a voice that sounded to me as if it were not my own. I thought of the lonely Mother of God, and the Disciple, and the crucifixion, and my mother, and wanted to cry and ask for forgiveness.
“What is your name?” asked the priest, laying the stole over my head.
How relieved I now felt, and how light of heart! My sins were gone, I was sanctified. I could enter into Paradise. It seemed to me that I exhaled the same odour as the priest’s cassock, and I sniffed my sleeve as I came out from behind the screen and went to the deacon to register. The dim half-light of the church no longer struck me as gloomy, and I could now look calmly and without anger at Mitka.
“What is your name?” asked the deacon.
“Fedia.”
“Fedia, what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is your daddy’s name?”
“Ivan.”
“And his other name?”
I was silent.
“How old are you?”
“Nine years old.”
On reaching home I went straight to bed to avoid seeing my family at supper. Shutting my eyes, I lay thinking of how glorious it would be to be martyred by Herod or some one; to live in a desert feeding bears like the hermit Seraphim; to pass one’s life in a cell with nothing to eat but wafers; to give away all one possessed to the poor; to make a pilgrimage to Kief. I could hear them laying the table in the dining-room; supper would soon be ready! There would be pickles and cabbage pasties and baked fish—oh, how hungry I was! I now felt willing to endure any torture whatsoever, to live in the desert without my mother, feeding bears out of my own hands, if only I could have just one little cabbage pasty first!
“Purify my heart, O God!” I prayed, pulling the bedclothes up over my head. “O guardian angels, save me from sin!”
Next morning, Thursday, I woke with a heart as serene and joyful as a spring day. I walked gaily and manfully to church, conscious that I was now a communicant and that I was wearing a beautiful and expensive shirt made from a silk dress left me by my grandmamma. Everything in church spoke of joy and happiness and springtime. The Mother of God andJohn the Baptist looked less sad than they had the evening before, and the faces of the communicants were radiant with anticipation. The past, it seemed, was all forgiven and forgotten. Mitka was there, washed and dressed in his Sunday best. I looked cheerfully at his protruding ears, and, to show that I bore him no malice, I said:
“You look fine to-day. If your hair didn’t stick up so and you weren’t so poorly dressed one might almost think your mother was a lady instead of a washerwoman. Come and play knuckle-bones with me on Easter Day!”
Mitka looked suspiciously at me and secretly threatened me with his fist.
The lady of yesterday was radiantly beautiful. She wore a light blue dress fastened with a large, flashing brooch shaped like a horseshoe.
I stood and admired her, thinking that when I grew to be a man I should certainly marry a woman like her, but, remembering suddenly that to think of marriage was shameful, I stopped, and moved toward the choir where the deacon was already reading the prayers that concluded the service.
AN INCIDENT
It was morning. Bright rays of sunlight were streaming into the nursery through the lacy curtain that the frost had drawn across the panes of the windows. Vania, a boy of six with a shaven head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a chubby, curly-haired girl of four, woke from their sleep and stared crossly at one another through the bars of their cribs.
“Oh, shame, shame!” grumbled nursie. “All good folks have had breakfast by now and your eyes are still half-closed!”
The sun’s rays were chasing each other merrily across the carpet, the walls, and the tail of nursie’s dress, and seemed to be inviting the children to a romp, but they did not notice the sun, they had waked in a bad humour. Nina pouted, made a wry face, and began to whine:
“Tea, nursie, I want my tea!”
Vania frowned and wondered how he could manage to quarrel and so find an excuse to bawl. He was already winking his eyes and opening his mouth when mamma’s voice came from the dining-room saying:
“Don’t forget to give the cat some milk; she has kittens now!”
Vania and Nina pulled long faces and looked dubiouslyat one another; then they both screamed, jumped out of bed, and scampered into the kitchen as they were, barefooted and in their little nightgowns, filling the air with shrill squeals as they ran.
“The cat has kittens! The cat has kittens!” they shrieked.
Under a bench in the kitchen stood a box, the same box which Stepan used for carrying coal when fires were lighted in the fire-places. Out of this box peered the cat. Profound weariness was manifested in her face, and her green eyes with their narrow black pupils wore an expression both languid and sentimental. One could see from her mien that if “he,” the father of her children, were but with her, her happiness would be complete. She opened her mouth wide and tried to mew but her throat only emitted a wheezing sound. The squeaking of her kittens came from inside the box.
The children squatted down on their heels near the box, motionless, holding their breath, their eyes riveted on the cat. They were dumb with wonder and amazement and did not hear their nurse as she grumblingly pursued them. Unaffected pleasure shone in the eyes of both.
In the lives and education of children domestic animals play a useful if inconspicuous part. Who does not remember some strong, noble watch-dog of his childhood, some petted spaniel, or the birds that died in captivity? Who does not recall the stupid, arrogant turkeys, and the meek old tabby-cats thatwere always ready to forgive us even when we stepped on their tails for fun and caused them the keenest pain? I sometimes think that the loyalty, patience, capacity for forgiveness, and fidelity of our domestic animals have a far greater and more potent influence over the minds of children than the long discourses of some pale, prosy German tutor or the hazy explanations of a governess who tries to tell them that water is compounded of oxygen and hydrogen.
“Oh, how tiny they are!” cried Nina, staring at the kittens round-eyed and breaking into a merry peal of laughter—“They look like mice!”
“One, two, three—” counted Vania. “Three kittens. That means one for me and one for you and one for some one else.”
“Murrm-murr-r-r-m,” purred the cat, flattered at receiving so much attention. “Murr-r-m.”
When they were tired of looking at the kittens, the children took them out from under the cat and began squeezing and pinching them; then, not satisfied with this, they wrapped them in the hems of their nightgowns and ran with them into the drawing-room.
Their mother was sitting there with a strange man. When she saw the children come in not dressed, not washed, with their nightgowns in the air she blushed and looked sternly at them.
“For shame! Let your nightgowns down!” she cried. “Go away or else I shall have to punish you!”
But the children heeded neither the threats of theirmother nor the presence of the stranger. They laid the kittens down on the carpet and raised their voices in shrill vociferation. The mother cat roamed about at their feet and mewed beseechingly. A moment later the children were seized and borne off into the nursery to be dressed and fed and to say their prayers, but their hearts were full of passionate longing to have done with these prosaic duties as quickly as possible and to escape once more into the kitchen.
Their usual games and occupations faded into the background.
By their arrival in the world the kittens had eclipsed everything else and had taken their place as the one engrossing novelty and passion of the day. If Vania or Nina had been offered a ton of candy or a thousand pennies for each one of the kittens they would have refused the bargain without a moment’s hesitation. They sat over the kittens in the kitchen until the very moment for dinner, in spite of the vigorous protests of their nurse and of the cook. The expression on their faces was serious, absorbed, and full of anxiety. They were worrying not only over the present, but also over the future of the kittens. They decided that one should stay at home with the old cat to console its mother, the second should go to the cottage in the country, and the third should live in the cellar where there were so many rats.
“But why don’t they open their eyes?” Nina puzzled. “They are blind, like beggars!”
Vania, too, was perturbed by this phenomenon. He set to work to open the eyes of one of the kittens, and puffed and snuffled over his task for a long time, but the operation proved to be unsuccessful. The children were also not a little worried because the kittens obstinately refused all meat and milk set before them. Their grey mother ate everything that was put under their little noses.
“Come on, let’s make some little houses for the kitties!” Vania suggested. “Then they can live in their own separate homes and the old kitty can come and visit them.”
They put hat-boxes in various corners of the kitchen, and the kittens were transferred to their new homes. But this family separation proved to be premature. With the same imploring, sentimental look on her face, the cat made the round of the boxes and carried her babies back to their former nest.
“Kitty is their mother,” Vania reflected. “But who is their father?”
“Yes, who is their father?” Nina repeated.
“Theymusthave a father,” both decided.
Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.
“Mind now!” the children admonished him. “Stand there and see they behave themselves!”
Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father’s study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as if he had sprung from the floor.
“What’s that?” Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.
“It’s—it’s a little kitty, papa.”
“I’ll show you a little kitty! Look what you’ve done, you bad boy, you’ve messed up the whole blotter!”
To Vania’s intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him, he pulled Vania’s ear and shouted:
“Stepan! Come and take this nasty thing away!”
At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a kitten was discovered under Nina’s apron.
“Nina, leave the table at once!” cried her father angrily. “Stepan, throw the kittens into the slop-barrel this minute! I won’t have such filth in the house!”
Vania and Nina were horrified. Apart from its cruelty, death in the slop-barrel threatened to deprive the old cat and the wooden horse of their children, to leave the box deserted, and to upset all their plans for the future, that beautiful future in which one cat would take care of its old mother, one would live in the country, and the third would catch rats in the cellar. The children began to cry and to beg for the lives of the kittens. Their father consented to spare them on condition that the children should under no circumstances go into the kitchen or touch the kittens.
When dinner was over, Vania and Nina roamed disconsolately through the house, pining for their pets. The prohibition to enter the kitchen had plunged them in gloom. They refused candy when it was offered them and were cross and rude to their mother. When their Uncle Peter came in the evening they took him aside and complained to him of their father who wanted to throw the kittens into the slop-barrel.
“Uncle Peter,” they begged. “Tell mamma to have the kittens brought into the nursery! Do tell her!”
“All right, all right!” their uncle consented to get rid of them.
Uncle Peter seldom came alone. There generally appeared with him Nero, a big black Dane with flapping ears and a tail as hard as a stick. He was a silent and gloomy dog, full of the consciousness of his own dignity. He ignored the children and thumped them with histail as he stalked by them as if they had been chairs. The children cordially hated him, but this time practical considerations triumphed over sentiment.
“Do you know what, Nina?” said Vania, opening his eyes very wide. “Let’s make Nero their father instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive.”
They waited all the evening for the time to come when papa should sit down to his whist and Nero might be admitted into the kitchen. At last papa began playing. Mamma was busy over the samovar and was not noticing the children—the happy moment had come!
“Come on!” Vania whispered to his sister.
But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:
“Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!”
Nina and Vania paled and looked at Stepan in horror.
“Indeed he has!” chuckled the butler. “He has found the box and eaten every one!”
The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air sheroamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing pitifully.
“Children, it’s ten o’clock! Go to bed!” cried mamma.
Vania and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.
A MATTER OF CLASSICS
Before going to take his Greek examination, Vania Ottopeloff devoutly kissed every icon in the house. He felt a load on his chest and his blood ran cold, while his heart beat madly and sank into his boots for fear of the unknown. What would become of him to-day? Would he get a B or a C? He asked his mother’s blessing six times over, and, as he left the house, he begged his aunt to pray for him. On his way to school he gave two copecks to a beggar, hoping that these two coins might redeem him from ignorance and that God would not let those numeral nouns with their terrible “Tessarakontas” and “Oktokaidekas” get in his way.
He came back from school late, at five o’clock, and went silently to his room to lie down. His thin cheeks were white and dark circles surrounded his eyes.
“Well? What happened? What did you get?” asked his mother coming to his bedside.
Vania blinked, made a wry face, and burst into tears. Mamma’s jaw dropped, she grew pale and threw up her hands, letting fall a pair of trousers which she had been mending.
“What are you crying for? You have failed, I suppose?” she asked.
“Yes, I’ve—I’ve been plucked. I got a C.”
“I knew that would happen, I had a presentiment that it would!” his mother exclaimed. “The Lord have mercy on us! What did you fail in?”
“In Greek—Oh, mother—they asked me the future of Phero and, instead of answering Oisomai, I answered Opsomai; and then—and then the accent is not used if the last syllable is a diphthong, but—but I got confused, I forgot that the alpha was long and put on the accent. Then we had to decline Artaxerxes and I got muddled and made a mistake in the ablative—so he gave me a C—Oh, I’m the unhappiest boy in the whole world! I worked all last night—I have got up at four every morning this week——”
“No, it is not you who are unhappy, you good-for-nothing boy, it is I! You have worn me as thin as a rail, you monster, you thorn in my flesh, you wicked burden on your parents! I have wept for you, I have broken my back working for you, you worthless trifler, and what is my reward? Have you learned a thing?”
“I—I study—all night—you see that yourself——”
“I have prayed God to send death to deliver me, poor sinner, but death will not come. You bane of my existence! Other people have decent children, but my only child isn’t worth a pin. Shall I beat you? I would if I could, but where shall I get the strength to do it? Mother of God, where shall I get the strength?”
Mamma covered her face with the hem of her dress and burst into tears. Vania squirmed with grief andpressed his forehead against the wall. His aunt came in.
“There, now, I had a presentiment of this!” she exclaimed, turning pale and throwing up her hands as she guessed at once what had happened. “I felt low in my mind all this morning; I knew we should have trouble, and here it is!”
“You viper! You bane of my existence!” exclaimed Vania’s mother.
“Why do you abuse him?” the boy’s aunt scolded the mother, nervously pulling off the coffee-coloured kerchief she wore on her head. “How is he to blame? It is your fault! Yours! Why did you send him to that school? What sort of lady are you? Do you want to climb up among the gentlefolk? Aha! You will certainly get there at this rate! If you had done as I told you, you would have put him into business as I did my Kuzia. There’s Kuzia now making five hundred roubles a year. Is that such a trifle that you can afford to laugh at it? You have tortured yourself and tortured the boy with all this book-learning, worse luck to it! See how thin he is! Hear him cough! He is thirteen years old and he looks more like ten.”
“No, Nastenka, no, darling, I haven’t beaten that tormentor of mine much, and beating is what he needs. Ugh! You Jesuit! You Mohammedan! You thorn in my flesh!” she cried, raising her hand as if to strike her son. “I should thrash you if I had the strength. People used to say to me when he wasstill little: ‘Beat him! Beat him!’ But I didn’t listen to them, unhappy woman that I am! So now I have to suffer for it. But wait a bit, I’ll have your ears boxed! Wait a bit——”
His mother shook her fist at him and went weeping into the room occupied by her lodger, Eftiki Kuporosoff. The lodger was sitting at his table reading “Dancing Self-Taught.” This Kuporosoff was considered a clever and learned person. He spoke through his nose, washed with scented soap that made every one in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast-days, and was looking for an enlightened wife; for these reasons he thought himself an extremely intellectual lodger. He also possessed a tenor voice.
“Dear me!” cried Vania’s mother, running into his room with the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Do be so very kind as to thrash my boy! Oh,dodo me that favour! He has failed in his examinations! Oh, misery me! Can you believe it, he has failed! I can’t punish him myself on account of being so weak and in bad health, so do thrash him for me! Be kind, be chivalrous and do it for me, Mr. Kuporosoff! Have mercy on a sick woman!”
Kuporosoff frowned and heaved a very deep sigh through his nostrils. He reflected, drummed on the table with his fingers, sighed once more, and went into Vania’s room.
“Look here!” he began his harangue. “Your parents are trying to educate you, aren’t they, and giveyou a start in life, you miserable young man? Then why do you act like this?”
He held forth for a long time, he made quite a speech. He referred to science, and to darkness and light.
“Yes, indeed, young man!” he exclaimed from time to time.
When he had concluded, he took off his belt and caught hold of Vania’s ear.
“This is the only way to treat you!” he exclaimed.
Vania knelt down obediently and put his head on Kuporosoff’s knees. His large pink ears rubbed against Kuporosoff’s new brown-striped trousers.
Vania made not a sound. That evening at a family conclave it was decided to put him into business at once.
THE TUTOR
The high-school boy Gregory Ziboroff condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete Udodoff. Pete, a chubby youngster of twelve with bristling hair, red cheeks, and a low forehead, dressed in a little grey suit, bows and scrapes, and reaches into the cupboard for his books. The lesson begins.
According to an agreement made with Udodoff, the father, Ziboroff is to help Pete with his lessons for two hours each day, in return for which he is to receive six roubles a month. He is preparing the boy for the second grade of the high-school. He prepared him for the first grade last year, but little Pete failed to pass his examinations.
“Very well,” begins Ziboroff lighting a cigarette. “You had the fourth declension to study. Declinefructus!”
Peter begins to decline it.
“There, you haven’t studied again!” cries Ziboroff rising. “This is the sixth time I have given you the fourth declension to learn, and you can’t get it through your head! For heaven’s sake, when will you ever begin to study your lessons?”
“What, you haven’t studied again?” exclaims awheezing voice in the next room and Pete’s papa, a retired civil servant, enters. “Why haven’t you studied? Oh, you little donkey! Just think, Gregory, I had to thrash him again yesterday!”
Sighing profoundly, Udodoff sits down beside his son and opens the boy’s ragged grammar. Ziboroff begins examining Pete before his father, thinking to himself: “I’ll just show that stupid father what a stupid son he has!” The high-school boy is seized with the fury of the examiner and is ready to beat the little red-cheeked numskull before him, he hates and despises him so. He is even annoyed when the youngster hits on the right answer to one of his questions. How odious this little Pete seems to him!
“You don’t even know the second declension! You don’t even know the first! This is the way you learn your lessons! Come, tell me, what is the vocative of meus filius?”
“The vocative of meus filius? Why the vocative of meus filius is—it is——”
Pete stares hard at the ceiling and moves his lips inaudibly. No answer comes.
“What is the dative of dea?”
“Deabus—filiabus!” Pete bursts out.
Old Udodoff nods approvingly. The high-school boy, who was not expecting a correct answer, feels annoyed.
“What other nouns have their dative in abus?” he asks.
It appears that anima, the soul, has its dative in abus, something that is not to be found in any grammar.
“What a melodious language Latin is!” observes Udodoff. “Alontron—bonus—anthropos—how marvellous! It is all very important!” he concludes with a sigh.
“The old brute is interrupting the lesson,” thinks Ziboroff. “Sitting over us like an inspector—I hate to be bossed! Now, then!” he cries to Pete. “You must learn that same lesson over again for next time. Next we’ll do some arithmetic. Fetch your slate! I want you to do this problem.”
Pete spits on his slate and rubs it dry with his sleeve. His tutor picks up the arithmetic and dictates the following problem to him.
“‘If a merchant buys 138 yards of cloth, some of which is black and some blue, for 540 roubles, how many yards of each did he buy if the blue cloth cost 5 roubles a yard and the black cloth 3?’ Repeat what I have just said.”
Peter repeats the problem and instantly and silently begins to divide 540 by 138.
“What are you doing? Wait a moment! No, no, go ahead! Is there a remainder? There ought not to be. Here, let me do it!”
Ziboroff divides 540 by 138, and finds that it goes three times and something over. He quickly rubs out the sum.
“How queer!” he thinks, ruffling his hair and flushing.“How should it be done? H’m—this is an indeterminate equation and not a sum in arithmetic at all——”
The tutor looks in the back of the book and finds that the answer is 75 and 63.
“H’m—that’s queer. Ought I to add 5 and 3 and divide 540 by 8? Is that right? No that’s not it. Come, do the sum!” he says to Pete.
“What’s the matter with you? That’s an easy problem!” cries Udodoff to Peter. “What a goose you are, sonny! Do it for him, Mr. Ziboroff!”
Gregory takes the pencil and begins figuring. He hiccoughs and flushes and pales.
“The fact is, this is an algebraical problem,” he says. “It ought to be solved withxandy. But it can be done in this way, too. Very well, I divide this by this, do you understand? Now then, I subtract it from this, see? Or, no, let me tell you, suppose you do this sum yourself for to-morrow. Think it out alone!”
Pete smiles maliciously. Udodoff smiles, too. Both realize the tutor’s perplexity. The high-school boy becomes still more violently embarrassed, rises, and begins to walk up and down.
“That sum can be done without the help of algebra,” says Udodoff, sighing and reaching for the counting board. “Look here!”
He rattles the counting board for a moment, and produces the answer 75 and 63, which is correct.
“That’s how we ignorant folks do it.”
The tutor falls a prey to the most unbearably painful sensations. He looks at the clock with a sinking heart, and sees that it still lacks an hour and a quarter to the end of the lesson. What an eternity that is!
“Now we will have some dictation,” he says.
After the dictation comes a lesson in geography; after that, Bible study; after Bible study, Russian—there is so much to learn in this world! At last the two hours’ lesson is over, Ziboroff reaches for his cap, condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete, and takes his leave of Udodoff.
“Could you let me have a little money to-day?” he asks timidly. “I must pay my school bill to-morrow. You owe me for six months’ lessons.”
“Oh, do I really? Oh, yes, yes—” mutters Udodoff. “I would certainly let you have the money with pleasure, but I’m sorry to say I haven’t any just now. Perhaps in a week—or two.”
Ziboroff acquiesces, puts on his heavy goloshes, and goes out to give his next lesson.