Ah, well, you don’t need them; you will be able to get along without them. Only you must not be afraid, do you see?”
It was a long time since I had come across any one who spoke to me simply and kindly in language that I could understand, and it was inexpressibly pleasant to me to listen to him.
When he took me back to my cot I asked him:
“Come and sit beside me.”
“All right,” he agreed.
“Who are you?”
“I?
I am a soldier, a real soldier, a Cossack.
And I have been in the wars — well, of course I have!
Soldiers live for war.
I have fought with the Hun — garians, with the Circassians, and the Poles, as many as you like.
War, my boy, is a great profession.”
I closed my eyes for a minute, and when I opened them, there, in the place of the soldier, sat grandmother, in a dark frock, and he was standing by her. She was saying:
“Dear me! So they are all dead?”
The sun was playing in the room, now gilding every object, then hiding, and then looking radiantly upon us all again, just like a child frolicking.
Babushka bent over me and asked:
“What is it, my darling?
They have been mutilating you?
I told that old red devil — ”
“I will make all the necessary arrangements,” said the soldier, going away, and grandmother, wiping the tears from her face, said:
“Our soldier, it seems, comes from Balakhna.”
I still thought that I must be dreaming, and kept silence.
The doctor came, bandaged my burns, and, behold! I was sitting with grandmother in a cab, and driving through the streets of the town.
She told me:
“That grandfather of ours he is going quite out of his mind, and he is so greedy that it is sickening to look at him.
Not long ago he took a hundred rubles out of the office-book of Xlist the furrier, a new friend of his.
What a set-out there was! E-h-h-h!”
The sun shone brightly, and clouds floated in the sky like white birds. We went by the bridge across the Volga. The ice groaned under us, water was visible under the planks of the bridge, and the golden cross gleamed over the red dome of the cathedral in the market-place.
We met a woman with a broad face. She was carrying an armful of willow-branches. The spring was coming; soon it would be Easter.
“I love you very much. Grandmother!”
This did not seem to surprise her. She answered in a calm voice:
“That is because we are of the same family. But — and I do not say it boastfully — there are others who love me, too, thanks to thee, O Blessed Lady!”
She added, smiling:
“She will soon be rejoicing; her Son will rise again!
Ah, Variusha, my daughter!”
Then she was silent.
CHAPTER II
GRANDFATHER met me in the yard; he was on his knees, chopping a wedge with a hatchet.
He raised the ax as if he were going to throw it at my head, and then took off his cap, saying mockingly:
“How do you do, your Holiness? Your Highness?
Have you finished your term of service?
Well, now you can live as you like, yes.
U-ugh! you — ”
“We know all about it, we know all about it!” said grandmother, hastily waving him away, and when she went into her room to get the samovar ready she told me:
“Grandfather is fairly ruined now. What money there was he lent at interest to his godson Nikolai, but he never got a receipt for it. I don’t quite know yet how they stand, but he is ruined; the money is lost.
And all this because we have not helped the poor or had compassion on the unfortunate. God has said to Himself, ‘Why should I do good to the Kashirins?’ and so He has taken everything from us.”
Looking round, she went on:
“I have been trying to soften the heart of the Lord toward us a little, so that He may not press too hardly on the old man, and I have begun to give a little in charity, secretly and at night, from what I have earned.
You can come with me today if you like. I have some money — ”
Grandfather came in blinking and asked: