After dinner my employers used to lie down, and I used to run downstairs. If she was at home, I would stay with her for an hour and sometimes even longer.
“You must read Russian books; you must know all about Russian life.” She taught me, sticking hair-pins into her fragrant hair with rosy fingers.
And she enumerated the Russian authors, adding:
“Will you remember them?”
She often said thoughtfully, and with an air of slight vexation:
“We must have you taught, and I am always forgetting.
Ach, my God!”
After sitting with her, I ran downstairs with a new book in my hands, feeling as if I had been washed inside.
I had already read Aksakov’s “Family Chronicle,” the glorious Russian poem
“In the Forests,” the amazing
“Memoirs of a Hunter,” several volumes of Greb — enkov and Solugub, and the poetry of Venevitinov, Odoevski, and Tutchev.
These books laved my soul, washing away the husks of barren and bitter reality. I felt that these were good books, and realized that they were indispensable to me.
One result of reading them was that I gained a firm conviction that I was not alone in the world, and the fact that I should not be lost took root in my soul.
When grandmother came to see me I used to tell her joyfully about Queen Margot, and she, taking a pinch of snuff with great enjoyment, said heartily:
Well, well; that is very nice.
You see, there are plenty of good people about. You only have to look for them, and then you will find them.”
And one day she suggested:
“How would it be if I went to her and said thank you for what she does for you?”
“No; it is better not.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to Lord! Lord! how good it all is!
I would like to go on living for ever and ever!”
Queen Margot never carried out her project of having me taught, for an unpleasant affair happened on the feast of the Holy Trinity that nearly ruined me.
Not long before the holiday my eyelids became terribly swollen, and my eyes were quite closed up. My employers were afraid that I should go blind, and I also was afraid.
They took me to the well-known doctor, Genrikh Rodzevich, who lanced my eyelids and for days I lay with my eyes bandaged, in tormenting, black misery.
The day before the feast of the Trinity my bandages were taken off, and I walked about once more, feeling as if I had come back from a grave in which I had been laid alive.
Nothing can be more terrible than to lose one’s sight. It is an unspeakable injury which takes away a hundred worlds from a man.
The joyful day of the Holy Trinity arrived, and, as an invalid, I was off duty from noon and went to the kitchen to pay a visit to the orderlies.
All of them, even the strict Tuphyaev, were drunk, and toward evening Ermokhin struck Sidorov on the head with a block of wood. The latter fell senseless to the ground, and Ermokhin, terrified, ran out to the causeway.
An alarming rumor that Sidorov had been murdered soon spread over the yard.
People gathered on the steps and looked at the soldier stretched motionless across the threshold. There were whispers that the police ought to be sent for, but no one went to fetch them, and no one could be persuaded to touch the soldier.
Then the washerwoman Natalia Kozlovski, in a new, blue frock, with a white neckerchief, appeared on the scene. She pushed the people aside angrily, went into the entrance passage, squatted down, and said loudly:
“Fools! He is alive!
Give me some water!”
They began to protest.
“Don’t meddle with what is not your business!”
“Water, I tell you!” she cried, as if there were a fire. She lifted her new frock over her knees in a businesslike manner, spread out her underskirt, and laid the soldier’s bleeding head on her knees.
The crowd dispersed, disapproving and fearful. In the dim light of the passage I could see the eyes of the washerwoman full of tears, flashing angrily in her white, round face.
I took her a pail of water, and she ordered me to throw it over the head and breast of Sidorov with the caution:
“Don’t spill it over me. I am going to pay a visit to some friends.”
The soldier came to himself, opened his dull eyes, and moaned.
“Lift him up,” said Natalia, holding him under the armpits with her hands outstretched lest he should soil her frock.
We carried the soldier into the kitchen and laid him on the bed. She wiped his face with a wet cloth, and went away, saying:
“Soak the cloth in water and hold it to his head. I will go and find that fool.
Devils! I suppose they won’t be satisfied until they have drunk themselves into prison.”
She went out, after slipping her soiled under-petticoat to the floor, flinging it into a corner and carefully smoothing out her rustling, crumpled frock.
Sidorov stretched himself, hiccupped, sighed. Warm drops of thick blood fell on my bare feet from his head. This was unpleasant, but I was too frightened to move my feet away from those drops.
It was bitter. The sun shone festively out in the yard; the steps of the houses and the gate were decorated with young birch; to each pedestal were tied freshly cut branches of maple and mountain ash. The whole street was gay with foliage; everything was young, new. Ever since the morning I had felt that the spring holiday had come to stay, and that it had made life cleaner, brighter, and happier.
The soldier was sick. The stifling odor of warm vodka and green onion filled the kitchen. Against the window were pressed dull, misty, broad faces, with flattened noses, and hands held against their cheeks, which made them look hideous.
The soldier muttered as he recollected himself:
“What happened to me?