A happy science of life
Is not hard for the simple.
Beranger aroused me to moods of joyfulness, to a desire to be saucy, and to say something rude to people, — rude, sharp words. In a very short time I had become proficient in this art.
His verses I learned by heart, and recited them with pleasure to the orderlies, running into the kitchen, where they sat for a few minutes at a time.
But I soon had to give this up because the lines,
But such a hat is not becoming To a young girl of seventeen, gave rise to an offensive conversation about girls that made me furiously disgusted, and I hit the soldier Ermokhin over the head with a saucepan.
Sidorov and the other orderlies tore me away from his clumsy hands, but I made up my mind from that time to go no more to the officers’ kitchen.
I was not allowed to walk about the streets. In fact, there was no time for it, since the work had so increased. Now, in addition to my usual duties as housemaid, yardman, and errand-boy, I had to nail calico to wide boards, fasten the plans thereto, and copy calculations for my master’s architectural work. I also had to verify the contractor’s accounts, for my master worked from morning to night, like a machine.
At that time the public buildings of the Yarmarka 5 were private property. Rows of shops were built very rapidly, and my master had the contracts for the reconstruction of old shops and the erection of new ones.
He drew up plans for the rebuilding of vaults, the throwing out of a dormer-window, and such changes. I took the plans to an old architect, together with an envelop in which was hidden paper money to the value of twenty-five rubles. The architect took the money, and wrote under the plans:
“The plans are correct, and the inspection of the work has been performed by me. Imraik.”
As a matter of fact, he had not seen the original of the plans, and he could not inspect the work, as he was always obliged to stay at home by reason of his malady. 5 Market-place.
I used to take bribes to the inspector of the Yarmarka and to other necessary people, from whom I re — ceived what the master called papers, which permitted all kinds of illegalities.
For this service I obtained the right to wait for my employers at the door on the front steps when they went out to see their friends in the evenings.
This did not often happen, but when it did, they never returned until after midnight. I used to sit at the top of the steps, or on the heap of planks opposite them, for hours, looking into the windows of my lady’s flat, thirstily listening to the gay conversation and the music.
The windows were open.
Through the curtains and the screen of flowers I could see the fine figures of officers moving about the room. The rotund major waddled about, and she floated about, dressed with astonishing simplicity, but beautifully.
In my own mind I called her “Queen Margot.”
“This is the gay life that they write about in French books,” I thought, looking in at the window.
And I always felt rather sad about it. A childish jealousy made it painful for me to see “Queen Margot” surrounded by men, who buzzed about her like bees over flowers.
Her least-frequent visitor was a tall, unhappy-looking officer, with a furrowed brow and deep-sunken eyes, who always brought his violin with him and played marvelously — so marvelously that the passers-by used to stop under the window, and all the dwellers in the street used to gather round. Even my employers, if they happened to be at home, would open the window, listen, and praise.
I never remember their praising any one else except the subdeacon of the cathedral, and I knew that a fish-pie was more pleasing to them than any kind of music.
Sometimes this officer sang, or recited verses in a muffled voice, sighing strangely and pressing his hand to his brow.
Once when I was playing under the window with the little girl and “Queen Margot” asked him to sing, he refused for a long time. Then he said clearly:
“Only a song has need of beauty, While beauty has no need of songs.”
I thought these lines were lovely, and for some reason I felt sorry for the officer.
What I liked best was to look at my lady when she sat at the piano, alone in the room, and played.
Music intoxicated me, and I could see nothing but the window, and beyond that, in the yellow light of the lamp, the finely formed figure of the woman, with her haughty profile and her white hands hovering like birds over the keys.
I gazed at her, listened to the plaintive music, and dreamed. If I could find some treasure, I would give it all to her, so that she should be rich.
If I had been Skobelev, I would have declared war on the Turks again. I would have taken money for ransoms, and built a house for her on the Otkossa, the best site in the whole town, and made her a present of it. If only she would leave this street, where every one talked offensively about her.
The neighbors, the servants belonging to our yard, and my employers more than all spoke about “Queen Margot” as evilly and spitefully as they had talked about the tailor’s wife, though more cautiously, with lowered voices, and looking about them as they spoke.
They were afraid of her, probably because she was the widow of a very distinguished man. The writings on the walls of her rooms, too, were privileges be — stowed on her husband’s ancestors by the old Russian emperors Goudonov, Alexei, and Peter the Great. This was told me by the soldier Tuphyaev, a man of education, who was always reading the gospels.
Or it may have been that people were afraid lest she should thrash them with her whip with the lilac-colored stone in the handle. It was said that she had once struck a person of position with it.
But words — uttered under the breath are no better than words uttered aloud. My lady lived in a cloud of enmity — an enmity which I could not understand and which, tormented me.
Now that I knew there was another life; that there were different people, feelings, and ideas, this house and all its tenants aroused in me a feeling of disgust that oppressed me more and more.
It was entangled in the meshes of a dirty net of disgraceful tittle-tattle, there was not a single person in it of whom evil was not spoken.
The regimental chaplain, though he was ill and miserable, had a reputation for being a drunkard and a rake; the officers and their wives were living, according to my employers, in a state of sin; the soldiers’ conversation about women, which ran on the same lines, had become repulsive to me. But my employers disgusted me most of all. I knew too well the real value of their favorite amusement, namely, the merciless judgment of other people.
Watching and com menting on the crimes of others was the only amuse — ment in which they could indulge without paying for it.
They amused themselves by putting those about them verbally on the rack, and, as it were, revenged themselves on others because they lived so piously, laboriously, and uninterestingly themselves.
When they spoke vilely about “Queen Margot” I was seized by a convulsion of feeling which was not childish at all. My heart swelled with hatred for the backbiters. I was overcome by an irresistible desire to do harm to every one, to be insolent, and sometimes a flood of tormenting pity for myself and every one else swept over me. That dumb pity was more painful than hatred.
I knew more about my queen than they did, and I was always afraid that they would find out what I knew.
On Sundays, when my employers had gone to the cathedral for high mass, I used to go to her the first thing in the morning. She would call me into her bedroom, and I sat in a small armchair, upholstered in gold-colored silk, with the little girl on my knee, and told the mother about the books I had read.
She lay in a wide bed, with her cheek resting on her small hands, which were clasped together. Her body was hidden under a counterpane, gold in color, like everything else in the bedroom; her dark hair lay in a plait over her swarthy shoulder and her breast, and sometimes fell over the side of the bed till it touched the floor.
As she listened to me she looked into my face with her soft eyes and a hardly perceptible smile and said:
“That’s right.”
Even her kind smile was, in my eyes, the condescending smile of a queen.
She spoke in a deep, tender voice, and it seemed to me that it said always:
“I know that I am immeasurably above all other people; no one of them is necessary to me.”
Sometimes I found her before her mirror, sitting in a low chair and doing her hair, the ends of which lay on her knees, over the arms, and back of the chair, and fell almost to the floor. Her hair was as long and thick as grandmother’s.
She put on her stockings in my presence, but her clean nudity aroused in me no feeling of shame. I had only a joyful feeling of pride in her.