I simply had to find that out.
Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master.
“The Huns?” he cried in amazement.
“The devil knows who they are.
Some trash, I expect.”
And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:
“That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is very bad, Pyeshkov.”
Bad or good, I wanted to know.
I had an idea that the regimental chaplain. Soloviev, ought to know who the Huns were, and when I caught him in the yard, I asked him.
The pale, sickly, always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows, and a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the earth, said to me:
“And what is that to do with you, eh?”
Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a ferocious:
“What-a-t?”
Then I concluded that the right person to ask about the Huns was the dispenser at the chemist’s. He always looked at me kindly. He had a clever face, and gold glasses on his large nose.
“The Huns,” said the dispenser, “were a nomad race, like the people of Khirgiz.
There are no more of these people now. They are all dead.”
I felt sad and vexed, not because the Huns were dead, but because the meaning of the word that had worried me for so long was quite simple, and was also of no use to me.
But I was grateful to the Huns after my collision with the word ceased to worry me so much, and thanks to Attilla, I made the acquaintance of the dispenser Goldberg.
This man knew the literal meaning of all words of wisdom. He had the keys to all knowledge.
Setting his glasses straight with two fingers, he looked fixedly into my eyes and said, as if he were driving small nails into my forehead:
“Words, my dear boy, are like leaves on a tree. If we want to find out why the leaves take one form instead of another, we must learn how the tree grows. We must study books, my dear boy.
Men are like a good garden in which everything grows, both pleasant and profitable.”
I often had to run to the chemist’s for soda-water and magnesia for the adults of the family, who were continually suffering from heartburn, and for castor-oil and purgatives for the children.
The short instructions which the dispenser gave me instilled into my mind a still deeper regard for books. They gradually became as necessary to me as vodka to the drunkard.
They showed me a new life, a life of noble sentiments and strong desires which incite people to deeds of heroism and crimes.
I saw that the people about me were fitted for neither heroism nor crime. They lived apart from everything that I read about in books, and it was hard to imagine what they found interesting in their lives.
I had no desire to live such a life.
I was quite decided on that point. I would not.
From the letterpress which accompanied the drawings I had learned that in Prague, London, and Paris there are no open drains in the middle of the city, or dirty gulleys choked with refuse. There were straight, broad streets, and different kinds of houses and churches.
There they did not have a six-months-long winter, which shuts people up in their houses, and no great fast, when only fermenting cabbage, pickled mushrooms, oatmeal, and potatoes cooked in disgusting vegetable oil can be eaten.
During the great fast books are forbidden, and they took away the
“Review of Painting” from me, and that empty, meager life again closed about me.
Now that I could compare it with the life pictured in books, it seemed more wretched and ugly than ever.
When I could read I felt well and strong; I worked well and quickly, and had an object in life. The sooner I was finished, the more time I should have for reading.
Deprived of books, I became lazy, and drowsy, and became a victim to forgetfulness, to which I had been a stranger before.
I remember that even during those dull days something mysterious happened. One evening when we had all gone to bed the bell of the cathedral suddenly rang out, arousing every one in the house at once. Half-dressed people rushed to the windows, asking one another:
“Is it a fire?
Is that the alarm-bell?”
In the other flats one could hear the same bustle going on. Doors slammed; some one ran across the yard with a horse ready saddled.
The old mistress shrieked that the cathedral had been robbed, but the master stopped her.
“Not so loud, Mamasha! Can’t you hear that that is not an alarm-bell?”
“Then the archbishop is dead.”
Victorushka climbed down from the loft, dressed himself, and muttered:
“I know what has happened. I know!”
The master sent me to the attic to see if the sky was red. I ran upstairs and climbed to the roof through the dormer-window. There was no red light in the sky. The bell tolled slowly in the quiet frosty air. The town lay sleepily on the earth. In the darkness invisible people ran about, scrunching the snow under their feet. Sledges squealed, and the bell wailed ominously.
I returned to the sitting-room.
“There is no red light in the sky.”
“Foo, you! Good gracious!” said the master, who had on his greatcoat and cap. He pulled up his collar and began to put his feet into his goloshes unde — cidedly.
The mistress begged him:
“Don’t go out!