CHAPTER IMY CHILDHOOD OF TOIL
My father, Leonti Semenovitch Frolkov, was born into serfdom at Nikolsko, a village in the province of Novgorod, some two hundred miles north of Moscow. He was fifteen when Alexander II emancipated the serfs in 1861, and remembers that historic event vividly, being fond even now of telling of the days of his boyhood. Impressed into the army in the early seventies, he served during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, and distinguished himself for bravery, receiving several medals. When a soldier he learned to read and write, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant.
Returning home at the end of the war, he passed through Tcharanda, a fishermen’s settlement on the shore of a lake, in the county of Kirilov, within thirty miles of Nikolsko. No longer dressed as a moujik, military in gait and bearing, with coins jingling in his pocket, he cut quite a figure in the poor hamlet of Tcharanda. There he met my mother, Olga, the eldest daughter of Elizar Nazarev, perhaps the most destitute inhabitant of the place.
Elizar, with his wife and three daughters, occupied a shabby hut on the sandy shore of the lake. So poorwas he that he could not afford to buy a horse to carry his catch to the city, and was compelled to sell it, far below the market price, to a travelling buyer. The income thus derived was not sufficient to keep the family from hunger. Bread was always a luxury in the little cabin. The soil was not tillable. Elizar’s wife would hire herself to the more prosperous peasants in the vicinity for ten kopeks (about 2¹⁄₂d.) a day to labour from sunrise to sunset. But even this additional money was not always to be had. Then Olga would be sent out to beg for bread in the neighbouring villages.
Once, when scarcely ten years old, little Olga underwent a harrowing experience, which she could never later recall without horror. Starting home with a basketful of bread, collected from several villages, she was fatigued but happy at the success of her errand, and hurried as fast as she could. Her path lay through a forest. Suddenly she heard the howling of a pack of wolves. Olga’s heart almost stopped beating. The dreadful sounds drew nearer. Overcome by fright, she fell unconscious to the ground.
When she regained her senses, she found herself alone. The wolves apparently had sniffed her prostrate body and gone their way. Her basket of bread was scattered in all directions, trampled in the mud. Out of breath, and without her precious burden, she arrived home.
It was in such circumstances that my mother grew to be nineteen, when she attracted the attention of Leonti Frolkov, who was then stopping in Tcharanda on his way home from the war. She was immensely flattered when he courted her. He even bought her a pair of shoes for a present, the first shoes she had ever worn. This captivated the humble Olga completely. She joyously accepted his marriage proposal.
After the wedding the young couple moved to Nikolsko, my father’s birthplace, where he had inherited a small tract of land. They tilled it together, and with great difficulty managed to make ends meet. My two elder sisters, Arina and Shura, were born here, increasing the poverty of my parents. My father, about this time, took to drinking, and began to maltreat and beat his wife. He was by nature morose and egotistical. Want was now making him cruel. My mother’s life with him became one of misery. She was constantly in tears, always pleading for mercy and praying to God.
I was born in July, 1889, the third girl in the family. At that time many railroads were being built throughout the country. When I was a year old, my father, who had once been stationed at Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar’s place of residence near the capital, decided to go to Petrograd to seek work. We were left without money. He wrote no letters. On the brink of starvation, my mother somehow contrived, with the aid of kind neighbours, to keep herself and her children alive.
When I was nearly six years old a letter came from my father, the first he had written during the five years of his absence. He had broken his right leg and, as soon as he was able to travel, had started home. My mother wept bitterly at the news, but was glad to hear from her husband whom she had almost given up for dead. In spite of his cruelty toward her, she still loved him. I remember how happy my mother was when my father arrived, but this happiness did not last long. Poverty and misery cut it short. My father’s harsh nature asserted itself again. Hardly had a year gone by when a fourth child, also a girl, arrived in our family. And there was no bread in the house.
From all parts of our section of the country peasants were migrating that year to Siberia, where the Governmentallowed them large grants of land. My father wanted to go, but my mother was opposed to it. However, when our neighbour, Verevkin, who had left sometime before for Siberia, wrote glowingly of the new country, my father made up his mind to go, too.
Most of the men would go alone, obtain grants of land, till them, build homesteads, and then return for their families. Those of the peasants who took their families with them had enough money to tide them over. But we were so poor that by the time we got to Tcheliabinsk, the last station in European Russia, and the Government distribution point, we had not a penny left. At the station my father obtained some hot water to make tea, while my two elder sisters were sent to beg for bread.
We were assigned to Kuskovo, eighty miles beyond Tomsk. At every station my sisters would beg food, while father filled our tea-kettle with hot water. Thus we got along till Tomsk was reached. Our grant of land was in the midst of thetaiga, the virgin Siberian forest. There could be no thought of immediately settling on it, so my father remained in Tomsk, while the rest of us were sent on to Kuskovo. My sisters went to work for board and clothing. My mother, still strong and in good health, baked bread for a living, while I took care of the baby.
One day my mother was expecting visitors. She had baked some cakes and bought a pint of vodka, which she put on the shelf. While she was at work I tried to lull the baby to sleep. But baby was restless, crying incessantly. I did not know how to calm her. Then my eyes fell on the bottle of vodka.
“It must be a very good thing,” I thought, and decided to give a glass to baby. Before doing so I tasted it myself. It was bitter, but I somehow wantedmore. I drank the first cup and, the bitterness having somewhat worn off, I drained another. In this manner I disposed of the entire bottle. Drowsy and weak, I took the baby into my arms and tried to rock it to sleep. But I myself began to stagger, and fell with the child to the floor.
Our mother found us there, screaming at the top of our voices. Presently the visitors arrived, and my mother reached for the bottle, only to discover that it had been emptied. It did not take her long to find the culprit. I shall always remember the whipping I got on that occasion.
Toward winter my father arrived from Tomsk. He brought little money with him. The winter was severe, and epidemics were raging in the country. We fell ill one by one, father, mother, then all the girls. As there was no bread in the house, and no money to buy anything, the community took care of us till the spring, housing and feeding us. By some miracle all of us escaped death, but our clothes had become rags. Our shoes fell to pieces. My parents decided to move to Tomsk, where we arrived barefoot and tattered, finding shelter at a poor inn on the outskirts of the town.
My father would work only a couple of days a week. He was lazy. The remainder of the week he idled away and drank. My sisters served as nurse-maids, while my mother worked in a bakery, keeping the baby and me with her. We slept in the loft of a stable, with the horses stamping below us. Our bed was of straw laid on the floor, which consisted of unshaven planks thrown across logs. Soon the baker’s wife began to object to feeding an extra mouth, which belonged to me. I was then over eight years old.
“Why don’t you send her to work? She can earn her own bread,” she argued.
My mother would draw me to her breast, weep and beg for mercy. But the proprietress became impatient, threatening to throw us all out.
Finally my father came to see us, with the good tidings that he had found a place for me. I was to care for a five-year-old boy, in return for my board and eighty-five kopeks a month.
“If you do well,” my father added, “you will by and by receive a rouble.”
Such was the beginning of my career in life. I was eight and a half years old, small and very thin. I had never before left my mother’s side, and both of us wept bitterly at parting. It was a grey, painful, incomprehensible world into which I was being led by my father. My view of it was further blurred by a stream of tears.
I took care of the little boy for several days. One afternoon, while amusing him by making figures in the sand, I myself became so engrossed in the game that I quarrelled with my charge, which led to a fight. I remember feeling keenly that I was in the right. But the child’s mother did not inquire into the matter. She heard his screams and whipped me for it.
I was deeply hurt by the undeserved whipping administered by a strange woman.
“Where was my mother? Why did not she come to avenge me?”
My mother did not answer my cries. Nobody did. I felt miserable. How wrong was the world, how unjust. It was not worth while living in such a world.
My feet were bare. My dress was all in rags. Nobody seemed to care for me. I was all alone, without friends, and nobody knew of the yearning in my heart. I would drown myself, I thought. Yes, I would run to the river and drown myself. Then I would go up, free of all pain, into the arms of God.
I resolved to slip out at the first chance and jump into the river, but before the opportunity presented itself my father called. He found me in tears.
“What’s the matter, Manka?” he asked.
“I am going to drown myself, papa,” I answered sadly.
“Great Heavens! What’s happened, you foolish child?”
I then poured out my heart to him, begging to be taken to my mother. He caressed me and talked of my mother’s distress if I left my place. He promised to buy me a pair of shoes, and I remained.
But I did not stay long. The little boy, having seen his mother punish me, began to take advantage of me, making my life quite unbearable. Finally I ran away and wandered about town till dark, looking for my mother. It was late when a policeman picked me up crying in the street and carried me to the police-station. The officer in charge of the station took me to his home for the night.
His house was rather large. I had never been in such a house before. When I awoke in the morning it seemed to me that there were a great many doors in it and all of them aroused my curiosity. I wanted to know what was behind them. As I opened one of the doors, I beheld the police-officer asleep on a bed, with a pistol by his side. I wanted to beat a hasty retreat, but he awoke. He seized the pistol and, still dazed from sleep, threatened me with it. Frightened, I ran out of the room.
My father, meanwhile, had been informed of my flight and had gone to the police-station in search of me. He was referred to the police-officer’s home. There he found me, weeping in the porch, and took me to my mother.
My parents then decided to establish a home. All their capital amounted to six roubles (about 12s.8d.). They rented a basement for three roubles a month. Two roubles my father invested in some second-hand furniture, consisting of a lame table and benches, and a few kitchen utensils. With a few kopeks from the last rouble in her purse my mother prepared some food for us. She sent me to buy a kopek’s worth of salt.
The grocer’s shop of the street was owned by a Jewess, named Nastasia Leontievna Fuchsman. She looked at me closely when I entered her shop, recognizing that I was a stranger in the street, and asked me:
“Whose are you?”
“I am of the Frolkovs. We have just moved into the basement in the next block.”
“I need a little girl to help me. Would you like to work for me?” she asked. “I’ll give you a rouble a month, and board.”
I was overjoyed and started for home at such speed that by the time I got to my mother I was quite breathless. I told her of the offer from the grocery-woman.
“But,” I added, “she is a Jewess.”
I had heard so many things of Jews that I was rather afraid, on second thoughts, to live under the same roof with a Jewess. My mother calmed my fears on that score and went to the grocer’s shop to have a talk with the proprietress. She came back satisfied, and I entered upon my apprenticeship to Nastasia Leontievna.
It was not an easy life. I learned to wait on customers, to run errands, to do everything in the house, from cooking and sewing to scrubbing floors. All day I slaved without ceasing, and at night I slept on a box in the passage-way between the shop and the house. My monthly earnings went to my mother, but they neversufficed to drive the spectre of starvation away from my home. My father earned little but drank much, and his temper became more and more harsh.
In time my wages were raised to two roubles a month. But as I grew I required more clothes, which my mother had to supply me from my earnings. Nastasia Leontievna was exacting and not infrequently punished me. But she also loved me as though I had been her own daughter, and always tried to make up for harsh treatment. I owe a great deal to her, as she taught me to do almost everything, both in her business and in housework.
I must have been about eleven when, in a fit of temper, I quarrelled with Nastasia Leontievna. Her brother frequented the theatre and constantly talked of it. I never quite understood what a theatre was like, but it attracted me, and I resolved one evening to get acquainted with that place of wonders. I asked Nastasia Leontievna for money to go there. She refused.
“You littlemoujitchka,[1]what do you want with the theatre?” she asked derisively.
[1]A peasant woman.
[1]A peasant woman.
“You d——d Jewess!” I retorted fiercely, and ran out of the shop. I went to my mother and told her of the incident. She was horrified.
“But now she won’t take you back. What shall we do without your wages, Marusia? How shall we pay the rent? We shall have to go begging again.” And she began to cry.
After some time my employer came after me, rebuking me for my quick temper.
“How could I have known that you were so anxious to go to the theatre?” she asked. “All right, I’ll give you fifteen kopeks every Sunday so that you can go.”
I became a regular Sunday occupant of the gallery, watching with intense interest the players, their strange gestures and manners of speech.
Five years I worked for Nastasia Leontievna, assuming more important duties as I grew older. Early in the morning I would rise, open the shutters, knead the dough, and sweep or scrub the floors. I finally grew weary of this daily grind and began to think of finding other work. But my mother was ill and my father worked less and less, drinking most of the time. He grew more brutal, beating us all unmercifully. My sisters were forced to stay away from home. Shura married at sixteen, and I, fourteen years old, became the mainstay of the family. It was often necessary to get my pay in advance in order to keep the family from starving.
The temptation to steal came to me suddenly one day. I had never stolen anything before, and Nastasia Leontievna repeatedly pointed out this virtue in me to her friends.
“Here is amoujitchkawho doesn’t steal,” she would say. But one day, on unpacking a barrel of sugar delivered at the shop, I found seven sugar-loaves instead of the usual six. The impulse to take the extra loaf of sugar was irresistible. At night I smuggled it stealthily out of the shop and took it home. My father was dismayed.
“What have you done, Marusia? Take it back immediately,” he ordered. I began to cry and said that the sugar was not really Nastasia Leontievna’s, that the error had been made at the refinery. Then my father consented to keep it.
I returned to the shop and went to bed, but my eyes would not close; my conscience troubled me. “What if she suspects that a loaf of sugar was missing? Whatif she discovers that I have stolen it?” And a feeling of shame came over me. The following day I could not look straight into Nastasia Leontievna’s eyes. I felt guilty. My face burned. At every motion of hers my heart quivered in anticipation of the terrible disclosure. Finally she noticed that there was something the matter with me.
“What’s wrong with you, Marusia?” she questioned, drawing me close to her. “Are you not well?”
This hurt even more. The burden of the sin I had committed weighed heavier and heavier. It rapidly became unbearable. My conscience would not be quieted. At the end of a couple of restless days and sleepless nights I decided to confess. I went into Nastasia Leontievna’s bedroom when she was asleep. Rushing to her bed, I fell on my knees and broke into sobs. She awoke in alarm.
“What’s happened, child? What is it?”
Weeping, I told the story of my theft, begging forgiveness and promising never to steal again. Nastasia Leontievna calmed me and sent me back to bed, but she could not forgive my parents. Next morning she visited our home, remonstrating with my father for his failure to return the sugar and punish me. The shame and humiliation of my parents knew no bounds.
Sundays I spent at home, helping my mother in the house. I would go to the well, which was a considerable distance away, for water. My mother baked bread all the week and my father carried it to the market, selling it at ten kopeks a loaf. His temper was steadily getting worse, and it was not unusual for me to find my mother in the yard in tears after my father had come home drunk.
I was now fifteen and began to grow dissatisfied with my lot. Life was stirring within me and quickening my imagination. Everything that passed by and beyondthe narrow little world in which I lived and laboured called me, beckoned to me, lured me. The impressions of that unfamiliar world which I had caught in the theatre had taken deep root in my soul and had kindled in me new ardours and desires. I wanted to dress nicely, to go out, to enjoy life’s pleasures. I wanted to be educated. I wanted to have enough money to secure my parents for ever from starvation and to be able to lead for a time, for a day even, an idle life, without having to rise with the sun, to scrub the floor or to wash clothes.
Ah! what would I not have given to taste the sweetness, the joy, that life held. But there seemed to be none for me. All day long I slaved in the little shop and kitchen. I never had a spare rouble. Something revolted within me against this bleak, purposeless, futureless existence.