The young mistress was afraid of books, too.
“It is very injurious to read books, and especially when you are young,” she said.
“At home, at Grebeshka, there was a young girl of good family who read and read, and the end of it was that she fell in love with the deacon, and the deacon’s wife so shamed her that it was terrible to see.
In the street, before everybody.”
Sometimes I used words out of Smouri’s books, in one of which, one without beginning or end, was written,
“Strictly speaking, no one person really invented powder; as is always the case, it appeared at the end of a long series of minor observations and discoveries.”
I do not know why I remembered these words so well. What I liked best of all was the joining of two phrases, “strictly speaking, no one person really invented powder.” I was aware of force underlying them; but they brought me sorrow, ludicrous sor — row.
It happened thus.
One day when my employers proposed that I should tell them about something which had happened on the boat I answered:
“I haven’t anything left to tell, strictly speaking.”
This amazed them. They cried:
“What?
What’s that you said?’
And all four began to laugh in a friendly fashion, repeating:
“‘Strictly speaking,’ — ah. Lord!”
Even the master said to me:
“You have thought that out badly, old fellow.”
And for a long time after that they used to call me:
“Hi, ‘strictly speaking,’ come here and wipe up the floor after the baby, strictly speaking.”
This stupid banter did not offend, but it greatly surprised, me.
I lived in a fog of stupefying grief, and I worked hard in order to fight against it.
I did not feel my inefficiencies when I was at work. In the house were two young children. The nurses never pleased the mistresses, and were continually being changed. I had to wait upon the children, to wash baby-clothes every day, and every week I had to go to the Jandarmski Fountain to rinse the linen. Here I was derided by the washerwomen:
“Why are you doing women’s work?”
Sometimes they worked me up to such a pitch that I slapped them with the wet, twisted linen. They paid me back generously for this, but I found them merry and interesting.
The Jandarmski Fountain ran along the bottom of a deep causeway and fell into the Oka. The causeway cut the town off from the field which was called, from the name of an ancient god, Yarilo.
On that field, near Semika, the inhabitants of the town had made a promenade. Grandmother had told me that in the days of her youth people still believed in Yarilo and offered sacrifices to him. They took a wheel, covered it with tarred tow, and let it roll down the hill with cries and songs, watching to see if the burning wheel would roll as far as the Oka.
If it did, the god Yarilo had accepted the sacrifice; the summer would be sunny and happy.
The washerwomen were for the most part from Yarilo, bold, headstrong women who had the life of the town at their finger-ends. It was very interesting to hear their tales of the merchants, chinovniks and officers for whom they worked.
To rinse the linen in winter in the icy water of the river was work for a galley-slave. All the women had their hands so frost-bitten that the skin was broken.
Bending over the stream, inclosed in a wooden trough, under an old penthouse full of crevices, which was no protection against either wind or snow, the women rinsed the linen. Their faces were flushed, pinched by the frost. The frost burned their wet fingers; they could not bend them. Tears trickled from their eyes, but they chatted all the time, telling one another different stories, bearing themselves with a peculiar bravery toward every one and everything.
The best of all the stories were told by Natalia Kozlovski, a woman of about thirty, fresh-faced, strong, with laughing eyes and a peculiarly facile and sharp tongue.
All her companions had a high regard for her; she was consulted on all sorts of affairs, and much admired for her skill in work, for the neatness of her attire, and because she had been able to send her daughter to the high school.
When, bending under the weight of two baskets of wet linen, she came down the hill on the slippery footpath, they greeted her gladly, and asked solicitously:
“Well, and how is the daughter?”
“Very well, thank you; she is learning well, thank God!”
“Look at that now! She will be a lady.”
“That’s why I am having her taught.
Where do the ladies with the painted faces come from?
They all come from us, from the black earth. And where else should they come from?
He who has the most knowledge has the longest arms and can take more, and the one who takes the most has the honor and glory.
God sends us into the world as stupid children and expects to take us back as wise old people, which means that we must learn!”
When she spoke every one was silent, listening attentively to her fluent, self-confident speech.
They praised her to her face and behind her back, amazed at her cleverness, her intellect; but no one tried to imitate her.
She had sewn brown leather from the leg of a boot, over the sleeve of her bodice which saved her from the necessity of baring her arms to the elbow, and prevented her sleeves from getting wet.
They all said what a good idea it was, but not one of them followed her example. When I did so they laughed at me.
“Ekh, you! Letting a woman teach you!”
With reference to her daughter she said:
“That is an important affair.
There will be one more young lady in the world. Is that a small thing?
But of course she may not be able to finish her studies; she may die.