When at length I learned to make a copy of the fagade which resembled the original he was pleased.
“There, you see what you can do!
Now, if you choose, we shall soon get on,” and he gave me a lesson.
“Make a plan of this house, showing the arrangement of the rooms, the places of the doors and win — dows, and the rest.
I shall not show you how. You must do it by yourself.”
I went to the kitchen and debated. How was I to do it?
But at this point my studies in the art of drawing came to a standstill.
The old mistress came to me and said spitefully:
“So you want to draw?”
Seizing me by the hair, she bumped my head on the table so hard that my nose and lips were bruised. Then she darted upon and tore up the paper, swept the instruments from the table, and with her hands on her hips said triumphantly:
“That was more than I could stand.
Is an outsider to do the work while his only brother, his own flesh and blood, goes elsewhere?”
The master came running in, his wife rushed after him, and a wild scene began. All three flew at one another, spitting and howling, and it ended in the women weeping, and the master saying to me:
“You will have to give up the idea for a time, and not learn. You can see for yourself what comes of it!”
I pitied him. He was so crushed, so defenseless, and quite deafened by the shrieks of the women.
I had realized before that the old woman did not like my studying, for she used to hinder me purposely, so I always asked her before I sat down to my drawing:
“There is nothing for me to do?”
She would answer frowningly:
“When there is I will tell you,” and in a few minutes she would send me on some errand, or she would say:
“How beautifully you cleaned the staircase today!
The corners are full of dirt and dust.
Go and sweep them!”
I would go and look, but there was never any dust.
“Do you dare to argue with me?” she would cry.
One day she upset kvass all over my drawings, and at another time she spilt oil from the image lamp over them. She played tricks on me like a young girl, with childish artfulness, and with childish ignorance trying to conceal her artfulness.
Never before or since have I met a person who was so soon put into a temper and for such trivial reasons, nor any one so passionately fond of complaining about every one and everything.
People, as a rule, are given to complaining, but she did it with a peculiar delight, as if she were singing a song.
Her love for her son was like an insanity. It amused me, but at the same time it frightened me by what I can only describe as its furious intensity.
Sometimes, after her morning prayers, she would stand by the stove, with her elbows resting on the mantel-board, and would whisper hotly:
“My luck! My idol! My little drop of hot blood, like a jewel! Light as an angel!
He sleeps. Sleep on, child! Clothe thy soul with happy dreams! Dream to thyself a bride, beautiful above all others, a princess and an heiress, the daughter of a merchant!
As for your enemies, may they perish as soon as they are born! And your friends, may they live for a hundred years, and may the girls run after you like ducks after the drake!”
All this was inexpressibly ludicrous to me. Coarse, lazy Victor was like a woodpecker, with a woodpecker’s large, mottled nose, and the same stubborn and dull nature.
Sometimes his mother’s whispers awoke him, and he muttered sleepily:
“Go to the devil, Mamasha! What do you mean by snorting right in my face?
You make life unbearable.”
Sometimes she stole away humbly, laughing:
“Well, go to sleep! Go to sleep, saucy fellow!”
But sometimes her legs seemed to give way, her feet came down heavily on the edge of the stove, and she opened her mouth and panted loudly, as if her tongue were on fire, gurgling out caustic words.
“So-o?
It’s your mother you are sending to the devil.
Ach! you! My shame! Accursed heart-sore! The devil must have set himself in my heart to ruin you from birth!”
She uttered obscene words, words of the drunken streets. It was painful to listen to her.
She slept little, fitfully jumping down from the stove sometimes several times in the night, and coming over to the couch to wake me.
“What is it?”
“Be quiet!” she would whisper, crossing herself and looking at something in the darkness.
“O Lord, Elias the prophet, great martyr Varvara, save me from sudden death!”
She lighted the candle with a trembling hand.
Her round, nosy face was swollen tensely; her gray eyes, blinking alarmingly, gazed fixedly at the surroundings, which looked different in the twilight.
The kitchen, which was large, but encumbered with cupboards and trunks, looked small by night.