My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 6 страница
My father, too, would be at home ... At the thought of him my heart stopped dancing: it seemed to sway back and forth, as if poised precariously on its toes.
The front door was unlocked as usual. We went straight in. I ran through the empty, half-lit drawing-room, calling out: ‘Maroossia, where are you?’ We collided in the doorway of the zala. Her cheeks were warm and soft. She laughed but her eyes were moist as I hung on her neck.
‘Króshka! I knew it was you when I heard the sleigh bells!’ The firm masculine steps approaching made me release her. My father came out of his study just as my mother and brother entered the room in my wake. He embraced my mother, asked whether she was tired after her journey, then turned to my brother and kissed him on the cheek with some remark which I failed to hear clearly. As he bent over me, I saw the glow of pleasure in his face, but somehow knew that I was not the cause of it. His moustache touched my cheek while my lips made the sound of a kiss, partly in the air. The flutter in my breast gave way to a faint, hollow ache.
The fir tree standing in the corner of the zala was a spectacle to raise my spirits again. It was beautifully thick and had a long straight spar at the top, adorned by a star which touched the ceiling. Boxes of decorations were standing, ready to be used, at the foot of the tree.
I was eager to start decorating it at once. My mother, however, thought it was not the thing to do after a tiring journey, and my protests that I was not in the least tired were ignored. My mother said she would much rather I tried on my new party frock — in case it needed alterations. There was to be a children’s Christmas party at the Club, held every year, and almost certainly invitations to several private houses.
Aniuta, as brisk and sharp-eyed as ever, helped me with it, and tied the blue silk sash behind my back.
‘It suits báryshnia ever so!’ she remarked to my mother.
She called me báryshnia! The days were over when, as my nursemaid, she presumed to teach me manners by making use of some of her peasant lore. ‘Don’t scatter bread about, Lédochka,’ she used to say. ‘It’s God’s gift. It’s a sin to leave it lying on the floor and have it trod on.’ Or: ‘Don’t swing your legs like that! When you do this you’re giving the devil a swing and he’s glad!’
I came out into the drawing-room where my mother and sister were sitting. To my relief, the males of the family were not there.
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‘Walk to the end of the room. Now turn,’ said my mother. ‘Turn round slowly. Is it even all round?’ she asked my sister.
I lingered in front of a tall mirror scrutinizing my appearance. The dress was very pretty, and I liked the blue sash, but wondered whether it would look even nicer if the bow were tied where I could see it — at the side. Little Lord Fauntleroy, whose story I had recently read and much enjoyed, wore his sash tied at the side. But my mother said only boys did that . . . How I wished I could have curly hair like him! Mine was so straight and fine that it blew out in all directions forming a kind of halo around my head.
My brother came into the room and seeing me in my party dress before a looking-glass, said: ‘Hm, hm!’ with a scoffing intonation. My sister at once drew him away and made him practise reversing waltz steps with her. I followed them into the zala where the floor was bare and polished, and the air fragrant with the scent of the fir tree. Maroossia sang a waltz tune while my brother wheeled her round and round, looking terribly solemn. I waltzed on my own, keeping out of their way. My mother came out of the drawing-room and watched us for a few minutes. She told my brother to keep his shoulders back a little more, then reminded us that it was getting late and the supper was on the table in the diningroom.
I had hardly had time to look at my own room since I entered the house, and now, about to go to bed, I stood gazing around me, comparing what I remembered with what I saw. The room looked very much as I had left it, only more tidy. AH the familiar things were in their places: a low toy cupboard in the far corner — as a small child I used to be frightened of something vague and creepy which might emerge from it in semi-darkness ... A picture of a dark-haired girl in oriental clothes carrying a pitcher - I had asked for a doll like her once, when I was ill in bed, and cried secretly and bitterly when they gave me the usual, inane- looking, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired thing. The ruby-red lamáda in the corner which made the silver casement over the image of the Virgin shine in the dark . . . My bed with my own quilt of wild silk in a blue and gold pattern, made in Samarkand . . . My bed where I had dreamed so many dreams, some full of excitement and delight, some terrifying . . . As I got inside it, I whispered my name — all the caressing variations on it my mother and sister were in the habit of using: Leda, Lédochka, Ledoosha, Ledoonia — as if to make sure that it was she who was I, and not that person whom at school they called ‘Rayévskaia’. I was conscious of a different self who was looking at my room with the eyes almost of a stranger, standing outside, hoping to be admitted.
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What were going to be my dreams tonight? I no longer had the dreams of ghosts which only a year or so ago made me dread going to sleep. I still had, however, recurrent dreams from which I awoke with a thumping heart. That first night of coming home from school I dropped off to sleep feeling the motion of the train, seeing the great fir trees, heavy with snow, and the white carpet underneath them, marked with the footprints of small animals, glide past me.
My dream began most pleasantly with a ride on horseback. The horse was my father’s Sultan on whose back I had sat only once — in the stable yard with Maxim holding the bridle. Now Sultan was prancing, obedient to my hand, along a snowy forest track. I knew that forest track, for I had walked and ridden along it in my former dreams, and I fully expected, as we turned the curve of the path, to see a white-columned house at the end of it, rather like our own house in the country, only grander and mysterious. We turned the curve — and there it was, and I knew I had to enter it.
Sultan stopped in front of the porch. I jumped off with fantastic ease and tip-toed up the wide steps, my heart half-stopping with curiosity and fear. The double door opened silently at a gentle push. The large hall was empty with three doors in it, all firmly closed. 1 tip-toed across it and opened the door in front of me. It led into a long room where all the furniture was covered with dust sheets, and as I was gazing around it, twilight came on. There had been no life, no sound until then — when I heard the front door open and footsteps approaching across the hall. Knowing that I must escape before I was seen, I raced towards the door at the opposite end, fumbled with the handle, struggled with its weight, and slipped through only just in time . . . But the pursuer had heard me and was running now . . . Another room, another door ... a succession of rooms and doors, each more difficult to open, heavier than the one before . . . My heart was in my mouth, the pursuer close on my heels . . . And then the last, small, shabby-looking door through which I crashed just as the pursuer's hand was touching my shoulder! . . . The frosty night air blew into my face, the snow squeaked under my feet, there were stars above the tops of the great fir trees ... It was all over, the strange attraction of the empty house, the pursuit and the terror. The light was coming back ... I was waking up. Where was I?
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I opened my eyes. The window panes were white, and my heart sank. These school dormitory windows — white, like the eyes of blind beggars I had seen in the streets . . . But no! the whiteness was the sparkling, fluffy whiteness of hoar frost, not of white paint. I was in my own room, after all! Outside my windows was our orchard, lovely and immaculate after a fresh fall of snow. I could run out into it without asking anyone’s permission, and wade through the snow up to my knees, and make a snowman, and stand under a young cherry tree and shake it, so that it shed its garment of hoar frost over me like a shower of silver spangles. I was free again!
The pleasure of these first few days at home was marred for me by a worrying thought: how would my presents be received by my family, especially by my father and brother? I meant this presentation to be a secret until the last moment, but it weighed so much on my mind that I had to tell my sister about it. I also told her that I just could not face handing them out myself — I could not face what might be an amused or a reluctant acceptance. I feared humiliation more than anything else.
My sister was, as always, comforting and reassuring. She talked it over with my mother, and they decided the best thing would be to put the presents on the breakfast table on Christmas morning, each with a slip of paper saying to whom and from whom, and leave everyone to pick up his own.
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But before Christmas morning there was Christmas Eve and the late evening church service. I had often seen my mother and sister go to church on ordinary Saturday evenings: my mother said she enjoyed choir singing at Evensong better than at a Sunday morning service. My sister used to fast for a week before Christmas and Easter. My mother did not approve of fasting for young people who were still growing. Nor did she take me to church except occasionally or on great Holy Days: standing on one’s feet through a long service, as everyone had to, she regarded as too tiring for any child.
How right she was! A mere half-hour’s standing made me fidgety; and the ordinary service, conducted in Old Slavonic, with many repetitions of the same phrases, intoned in the same manner, bored me; for the meaning of what was happening remained unintelligible and was not explained to me until much later in my life. My mother, by not taking me with her, was also, no doubt, protecting herself from embarrassment, for on one occasion at least she had to stop me from tracing with my finger the outline of a cross embroidered on the priest’s garment.
The Great Holy Days were, however, different: the service had a solemn splendour and the events it commemorated were familiar — they stirred imagination. On that first Christmas home from school, having tasted the real unhappiness and pain of separation, I was eager for the kind of experience which, I had been told, gave one strength and comfort, and I was full of reverent curiosity about religion and the church. I begged my mother to take me to the late Christmas Eve service which she and my sister were going to attend, and after some persuasion she agreed to do so.
The story of the Infant Jesus born in Bethlehem is a marvellous one to tell a child. I particularly liked being told about the star which appeared to the shepherds guarding their flocks in the desert. I was transported to that wild, distant place under the infinite starlight, and I watched with them, awed and amazed, the great new star rising above the horizon, and saw and heard the angel telling them to go to Bethlehem and worship the newborn Child. With them I trudged along stony paths, following the star, until it stopped above the stable in which the Child lay.
Christmas Eve! The day charged with expectancy above all days. Anticipation of what was going to take place in church was blended with the excitement of preparations for the supper that was to follow — the sacred blended with the profane. I had to make sure that they had not forgotten to put hay under the tablecloth on the dining-room table before they set it for supper. My mother had said more than once that this custom, probably pagan in origin but later linked up with the Birth in the manger, was tiresome and she wished to abandon it. Glasses would not stand upright on the uneven surface and liquids were spilt over the cloth. But to me Christmas Eve would not be real unless this custom were followed, so I went to investigate. I found the dining room fragrant with the scent of hay, and Aniuta sweeping some stray blades of dry grass from under the table. The scent immediately conjured up the picture of summer meadows and myself riding through them on horseback — an image that made me happy.
Aniuta told me that my sister was already dressing for church and asked: would I like her to help me on with my gaiters? On the way to my room I met our cook, Galaktyón, and could not refrain from asking him whether he had remembered to make the kootiy á for supper.
‘But of course, báryshnia!’ he replied. ‘How can we do without the kootijd on Christmas Eve? I’ve made one that size!’ And he showed with his hands the size of a small haystack. Unlike most cooks, Galaktyón was inexhaustibly cheerful; he was my second favourite among the servants after the coachman, Maxim.
Maxim drove us to church in a large, two-horse sleigh. The service had already begun when we came in, but this mattered little because there was always plenty of coming and going in the early part of the service. Here and there people were praying singly, on their knees before their chosen icon, crossing themselves and touching the floor with their foreheads. Others were bringing their small candles to the huge candlesticks that stood in front of the iconostasis. They lighted them from the already burning candles, stuck them into empty sockets, crossed themselves, went up to the icon and kissed it, then crossed themselves again and withdrew.
No one had told me in so many words, but I knew that the candle was their present to the Saint or to Jesus Himself, a request not to be forgotten, or to be good to the person for whose health or well-being they had been praying. And I knew that it was the same to Jesus whether the candle was a beautiful one in pale wax with a thread of gold in it which cost fifty kopecks, or a two-kopeck one in dark yellow wax, so thin that it went crooked in the hand of the old woman in a black shawl even before she had had time to light it.
‘Would you like to put up a candle?’ my sister whispered into my ear.
‘Oh, yes! ’ I was eager but also apprehensive that I might do something wrong, in full view of all the people now assembled in the body of the church. I crossed the few feet of the floor separating me from the nearest big candlestick blazing with light and heat, and as I stood before it, I realized that not a single socket among its many was free. I did not know what to do, and my embarrassment grew when I noticed that my candle, though moderately thick, was becoming soft and bending in the hot grip of my hand.
My sister came to my help. I saw her hand stretching over my shoulder, removing one of the guttering stumps and uncovering a little pool of hot wax at the bottom of the socket. Now I did not need to heat the end of my candle — I could just put it straight in. My sister blew out the burning stump, then just as confidently took out another, making room for her own candle. She straightened out several crooked ones, crossed herself and signed me to come back with her.
From my place beside my mother I watched my candle burning before the great bejewelled image of the Virgin. What did I put it up jot? Was it to ask that I need not go back to the boarding school?
The knowledge that I had to go back after the holidays was like a thorn buried deeply in my flesh, unheeded most of the time, then suddenly making itself felt as a jab of blunt pain. I turned to look at my mother, wondering if I could still sway her to grant me my wish, but her praying face looked remote and unaware of the pleading in my eyes.
I glanced at my sister; she, too, was praying, but responded with a rapid look out of the corner of her lustrous brown eye. How sweet she looked in her little fur cap with her tipped-up nose, her faintly outlined eyebrows and the delicate colour in her cheeks! A strong wave of tenderness for her welled up in me . . .1 decided to pray for her — her happiness, her success in passing the examinations at the Koorsy and obtaining the highest credits . . .
But hard as I tried, I found it impossible to concentrate on prayer for more than a few minutes. The church was now packed with people and ablaze with many candles. The choir was singing louder and more joyously. It was glorifying the birth of Jesus and his Mother, the Virgin Mary. A rapt observer, I watched the comings and goings of the priests who swung their censers at the icons, then at the congregation, and intoned their prayers, while the choir sang their responses. Their fervour went on increasing until in an explosion of sound came the familiar words: ‘Glory to God in Heaven, peace on this earth and goodwill among men!’
Goodwill! . . . Goodwill? Never to dislike anybody? Never to feel angry? To love one’s enemies? To love Fatima, Mílochka, Fräulein Schmiedel?. . . For a moment even that seemed possible. For a moment I felt as if I were floating on a flood of warmth and light. My head swam. I must have swayed on my feet because my sister glanced at me with alarm and put out her hand towards me.
But it passed away — the ecstasy and the dizziness. The service continued, but I was now conscious of my aching legs and back, and I saw with relief the Royal Gates flung open and Father Ioann come out with a silver cross in his hands. Father Ioann, small, slender, with streaks of yellow in his white beard, looked quite impressive in his blue and silver vestments, and different from the bátiushka who came to our house to play cards with my father, and at whose house we visited. Now he was looking at us without a sign of recognition, but one of his acolytes motioned us to come forward to kiss the cross, and protected us with his broad back and strong arms against accidental jostling.
Maxim was waiting outside with the sleigh, and as we drove back, I stared at the star-filled sky above us.
‘Which is the star of Bethlehem?’ I asked. And as no reply came for a few moments, I pointed at one, low above the horizon, which was burning with a quivering blue light. ‘Is that the one?’
‘I think that is Venus, króshka. ’ My sister was letting me down gently. ‘The star of Bethlehem appeared only to the shepherds . . . nearly two thousand years ago . . . ’
When we got home the supper was set out on the table, a Lenten meal, abundant and varied but without meat, milk, eggs or butter. There was the inevitable salt herring, neatly cut into portions and trimmed with rings of raw onion; a salad of potatoes, beetroot and1' cucumber preserved in brine; fish fried in oil; sardines; fritters with prunes, and, of course, the central and most important dish of all — the kootiy á. This was boiled rice piled up in the shape of a conical monnd, to be eaten last with a honey sauce. No one could tell me what kootiy á really meant, but it was a traditional dish for the Christmas Eve supper, and no Christmas would have been right without it.
While we were still at supper, the front door bell rang, and Aniuta, who had run to open it, came back with a look of half-apology and half-excitement, announcing the star-bearers.
I jumped up from my seat. My father glanced at me, and I sat down again.
‘Shall we have them in?’ my mother asked, addressing all of us.
My father said nothing. My brother shrugged. I nodded emphatically.
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