My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 8 страница
‘What is the matter?’ asked my mother. ‘He can’t dance the waltz ... he can’t dance at all . . . ’ I gasped.
‘You shouldn’t have left him like that all the same,’ said my mother. ‘Should she, Monsieur Rodionov?’
‘Would you like a turn with me, Lédochka?’ asked a welcome voice.
My rescuer and my mentor! He knew how well I could dance because he had taught me. From the depths of dejection I was all at once raised to the heights of bliss.
My toes hardly touching the floor, my body completely at one with the rhythm of movement, I saw the room full of whirling couples, the lights and the Christmas tree as a world out of this world. I was ravished and only wished it could go on for ever. ‘Please, God, let it go on . . . please don’t let the band stop! ’
‘Are you dizzy?’ Monsieur Rodionov asked as I clung to his arm while he led me to a chair beside my mother’s.
‘No, not at all, not in the least,’ I assured him. I wanted my mother to talk to him and keep him until the next dance began: I dreaded the Martynov boy coming and asking me to dance again. But perhaps he would not dare after that waltz . . .
He did dare. As soon as the band started playing a chardash, he came up and stood before me, looking not in the least embarrassed, his piggy eyes fixed on me with a curious intensity.
‘May I have this dance?’
I took my courage in both hands, blushed violently and blurted out:
‘I can’t . . . I’m not feeling very well . . . ’
He blushed, too, because, I thought, he saw that I was lying, bowed and shuffled off. I felt sorry about hurting him, but I noticed - and disliked — the way he walked with his knees half-bent and his long arms swinging by his sides. He joined a small thin woman who was sitting on the other side of the room, and a few moments later I saw them dancing together. She was teaching him the chardash, and he was floundering hopelessly, just as he had done when dancing with me. How wrong, I thought, to ask people to dance with him before he had learned the steps.
The threat of his invitation hung over me for the rest of the evening. There was a respite during the interval when Christmas presents were raffled and a young man with a blue rosette in his lapel went around announcing that a beautiful talking doll had to be won. I coveted that doll, but I drew a ticket which provided me with a pencil case no more attractive than the one I already had. The doll was won by a boy who immediately passed it on to his delighted sister. I wondered what ‘luck’ really meant and whether there was anything special about people who won the best things in lotteries. I have never been one of them, and my conviction that ‘luck’ never favoured me grew from the seed sown at that Christmas party many years ago.
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The party ended with the distribution of ‘little bags’ made of bright coloured satin and containing sweets, nuts and an orange. All the time I was aware — or imagined — that the boy Martynov was watching me from afar, and when the time for our departure was signalled by the band playing a cheerful march, I saw him making his way towards us against the stream of people drifting towards the exit. He was pulling his mother along with him, and she followed, smiling, one arm through the sleeve of her overcoat and a frilly woollen hat slipping sideways off her head. I tugged at my mother’s arm, wanting her to leave before they had time to reach us, but she shook her head.
‘Don’t be impatient. It’s best to wait until there’s more room in the vestibule.’
The boy Martynov and his mother were now within speaking distance from us. He pulled her forward and she spoke to my mother, a little breathlessly.
‘May I introduce myself? Martynova, Evdokiya Petrovna . . . This is my son, Shoora. He wants me to tell you that he is having a little Christmas party on the twenty-seventh, and we would be delighted if your son and daughters would care to come.’
Madame Martynova and my mother shook hands. The invitation was accepted.
‘Do you know this Shoora Martynov?’ my mother asked my brother on the way home. ‘Is he older than you or younger? It’s hard to tell.’
‘He’s older by a class. He’s supposed to be rather clever, but some people say that he’s mad.’
‘What do you mean? Mad?’
‘Well, it’s his manner, I suppose. The way he talks and gesticulates when he’s excited. Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard others say.’
‘Mad or not, he certainly was determined to dance with our Leda,’ said my mother.
‘I don’t envy her,’ my brother said.
It was with a mixture of curiosity and reluctance that I saw the date of the Martynov party arrive. My brother, who was to accompany me, disliked the prospect and showed his annoyance by referring to Shoora as my ‘simian admirer’. Deep down I was flattered by the evidence of Shoora’s admiration, but at the same time distressed by his ugliness and his inability to dance. I would not be able to refuse him at his own party — and the foretaste of this ordeal made me shrivel up inside.
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Anticipation or foresight, habit or inborn trait, whatever you call this propensity, it can be a blessing, but more often is a kind of curse. How often have I forestalled harrowing experiences in imagination only to discover that what really happened was much less trying and dramatic. And how rarely have people and places I have pictured to myself before I saw them come up to my expectations. Often they have proved to be so different that their effect was to put right out the bright burning flame of anticipation. It took me half my life to train myself not to anticipate too eagerly, too vividly and with too much haste.
The Martynov party proved to be much less of a trial and more of a bore than I had expected. Theirs was a rather dreary drawing-room with a thin, almost bedraggled Christmas tree, and with Madame Martynova acting as the music-maker, mistress of ceremonies and head- waitress, all in one. There were about half-a-dozen other children, all younger than myself and very much younger than their host, who took little notice of them and showered all his attentions on me.
To my great relief there was no proper dancing because none of the other guests could dance. We played games: musical chairs, blind man’s buff, ‘the damaged telephone’ and such like. Madame Martynova thumped away at the piano and urged her young visitors to enjoy themselves. They were not very responsive. My brother, silent and conspicuously bored, cast an occasional glance at the plates of sandwiches and pastries displayed on the sideboard but not yet offered for consumption. Shoora, beaming with satisfaction, always managed to throw himself on to a chair next to me in the game of musical chairs; to sit beside me and whisper into my ear when playing at ‘damaged telephone’. It was always his hands that tied a handkerchief over my eyes when I had to be the ‘blind man’, and he succeeded in getting himself caught by me every time I groped around the room.
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He protested loudly when at ten o’clock their maid reported that our sleigh had come for us. My brother had made sure that Maxim would fetch us not later than the proverbial ‘children’s hour’. But Madame Martynova would not let us leave before she had rapped out a farewell march on her long-suffering piano. And we all had to take away the ‘little bags’ with nuts and an orange which she had prepared for us. I was made very self-conscious by being presented, in addition to the bag, with a small fretwork box lined with red satin, a gift which the other guests eyed with curiosity but without enthusiasm.
‘Shoorochka made it himself,’ Madame Martynova said proudly. ‘It was to be presented to the queen of the party, so Lédochka receives it tonight! ’
I curtseyed and thanked the hostess; I could not bring myself to thank Shoora, who was fixing me with his bright, piggy eyes. He rushed to help me with my overcoat in the lobby; he knelt on the floor to put on my snow boots for me. He was eager to serve — but his parting remark was quite unanswerable and made me hot with embarrassment.
‘It’s been a good party, hasn’t it?’ he said.
‘What an ass!’ my brother growled as he drew his chin inside his fur collar and leaned back in the jerkily moving sleigh. ‘He’s supposed to be clever but he says such asinine things. Fancy praising his own party! He’s got to boast about something every time.’
I did not reply. I knew he had been bored at the party and was blaming me for it, and I felt vaguely guilty about it all. But what could I do? I had not wanted Shoora Martynov to become my ‘admirer’. Nor did I want this fretwork box which I was holding inside my muff. What use could I make of it? I had no jewellery, no rings or bracelets, and I hated the small ruby earrings my mother liked me to wear. Could I put them inside the box and forget them? But my mother would not allow that.
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I listened to the soothing, delicate jingling of the harness bells and pondered. Mother and son had been so proud of giving me the little box because ‘he made it himself’. She called me ‘the queen of the evening’. Why? I felt an inner movement of revulsion and withdrawal from this unasked-for and unwelcome obligation - the obligation to accept an unwanted gift and to be grateful for it.
To be a Girl
That first Christmas from school stands out in memory as a kind of watershed, a dividing line between true childhood and the beginnings of adolescence. The things that happened during that holiday, the succession of parties, the keenness of my partners on dancing with me, Shoora Martynov’s conspicuous devotion, his mother’s flattery in calling me ‘the queen of the party’, all this made me aware of my femininity, of the pleasures, as well as the snags, of being liked by the opposite sex. I had had fleeting experience of power over others before: in play with my girl companions in town or country, I usually led and they followed. But now for the first time I realized that I could have power not because I produced good ideas for play or for adventure, but because I was a girl — and of this I felt half-proud and half-ashamed.
Inevitably, I threw glances at myself whenever I passed a mirror. No, decidedly, I did not look like a queen, nor even a princess — not as I pictured them in my imagination. They would not have such straight hair, such a large mouth. Nor did I want to queen it over people like Shoora Martynov — so unattractive to look at, so unenviable a subject! Over whom, then? A photograph I saw in an illustrated magazine gave me an idea. It represented the Tsar’s family on a visit to the Kremlin. In some sort of procession the four daughters of the Tsar followed their parents on foot, but the heir to the throne, the Grand Duke Alexéy, was carried by his personal servant, the sailor Doroshenko. That strong, big man was obviously devoted to him: he would do anything the boy wanted. To command anyone like that would indeed be a pleasure . . .
But who could it be? And then I thought of Ivan, our new manservant.
Ivan had been engaged since I went to boarding school. He was a ginger-headed fellow of about twenty-five, with a freckled face and a pleasant tenor voice, and he was being ‘broken into service’ by Piotr, my father’s valet. Piotr himself used the expression ‘breaking in’, as if Ivan were a wild horse. I heard him remark that Ivan came to our house ‘straight from the plough’. As I found out later, this was not really true, for Ivan had done his spell as a conscript in the Army and had some of his country uncouthness rubbed off him. True to his army training, he stood to attention when he saw my mother or father approach, and he replied to orders or questions with military phrases, such as: ‘Tochno tak’ (‘Exactly so’) instead of ‘Yes’, ‘Nikak nyet’ (‘In no way so’) instead of ‘No’, and ‘Slooshayus’ (‘I obey’) instead of ‘I will’. In other ways he remained unsophisticated and spontaneous, and his behaviour on occasions gave rise to some rather endearing anecdotes.
My mother told us how once he stood stock still and silent after she had asked him to go and buy two pounds of ‘cooking’ butter.
‘What are you waiting for, Ivan?’ she asked.
‘Wh-what butter did you say, bárynia?’ he stammered. He had never heard the phrase used to distinguish the butter for cooking from ‘cream’ butter, served at table.
My brother had another story. Piotr had told him that Ivan was a fair shot and knew a place not far out of town where a hare or two could be found. My brother was in bed when Ivan brought in a pair of shoes he had just polished, and they entered into a conversation about shooting. ‘Ivan got so excited about it that he came closer and closer to me,’ my brother said, ‘and suddenly he plonked himself down on my bed, just missing my feet, and went on talking. Just then Piotr looked in. You should have seen his face! His jaw fell, he started winking and jerking his head at Ivan to get him on his feet. But Ivan was not looking his way at all. He jumped up pretty fast, though, when Piotr hissed at him.’
Despite these stories, my own experience of Ivan’s naivete took me by surprise. I was having a late breakfast alone one morning and he served me with a boiled egg. I broke the shell: the white looked a little discoloured, and I turned to Ivan for advice.
‘Look, Ivan, I wonder if it’s quite fresh?’
He took it from me, put it to his lips, sipped a little, then, handing it back to me, said calmly: ‘It’s all right, báryshnia.’
I was taken aback for a moment, then picked up my spoon and ate the egg in silence, wondering whether I should say anything about it to anybody. I was getting fond of Ivan and had never really liked Piotr.
That Christmas time Ivan was sent to fetch me from one of the parties at a house so near ours that it was not worth the trouble of harnessing a horse to a sleigh. It was a night of full moon, with the moonlight so strong that everything around sparkled as if sacks of diamonds had been shaken out over the snow, and looking up, one saw white clouds and blue-black sky. The road, polished by the runners of many sleighs, was shiny and slippery. The splendour of this scene following upon the excitement of the party made me feel as if I could fly. But in reality, my feet were slithering, and the shawl my mother had sent with Ivan to be put over my head and shoulders against the night frost, was making me clumsy and constricted. Suddenly the wish to test my power over Ivan, the longing to be carried like the heir to the throne came over me. I stopped, clutching at his sleeve.
‘Ivan, I’m tired. Will you carry me?’
He looked a little surprised, then grinned and without a word picked me up and carried me. His boots made a squeaky noise on the snow; now and again he slipped or stumbled, but quickly regained his balance. Then we both laughed, and I pointed out to him his shortened shadow with my head sticking above his shoulder, following us along the bright road. What a strange feeling it was! He was stronger than me, yet I could command him. He was taller than I, but as he held me up, I could almost look down on him. I was in his power, and he — in mine. Exhilarated, I was yet aware of the effort it cost him, and I felt remorse — then alarm. What if my father came to know of this?
The street had been empty until that moment when I heard the snow squeak under another pair of feet and saw a human shape appear in the distance.
‘Ivan, please put me down,’ I said quickly.
‘Why, báryshnia?’ I can carry you right up to the house and up the steps of the porch.’
‘No, please, I’d rather walk now.’
He complied, blew out his breath and laughed.
‘You’re not all that heavy, báryshnia,’ he said.
I thought that the man who passed us gave us a curious look, and I wondered whether he had seen. He might be thinking: ‘Fancy a big girl like that being carried! What’s the matter with her?’
The house was only a few yards away now, and I hung on to Ivan’s arm as we took a run and tried to slide along the polished surface of the road.
Laughing, we raced up the steps of the porch, Ivan helping me to keep a step ahead of him. We pushed open the first of the double front doors, then, suddenly, Ivan pulled himself up, took off his cap and stepped back with the words: ‘I wish you good night, báryshnia ! ’ He remembered what Piotr called ‘the due respect’, and did not come into the house with me wearing his sheepskin coat and boots, but went back to the gates of the courtyard and across it to the servants’ quarters where he slept.
Aniuta helped me off with my clothes.
‘You’re perspiring a lot,’ she remarked, wonderingly. ‘Have you been running or something?’
‘It’s that shawl,’ I retorted, half-truthfully.
I wondered if Ivan, in his simplicity of soul, might not tell Piotr about having carried me, and whether the story would reach my father’s hearing. So next day I watched Piotr’s impassive face for signs of disapproval, but discovered none: Ivan must have thought that carrying me home from a party was a task too ordinary to be mentioned to anyone. Dear, sensible Ivan!
Time stood still during the first few days of the holiday, then it rushed madly towards the end. It was a most painful wrench to leave home again, but this time I was facing it with my teeth clenched rather than with tears of despair. I cried, of course, when I said good-bye to my mother and sister, but a kernel of hardness began to form deep inside me, a fruit of the discovery that my mother had not taken my unhappiness as much to heart as I imagined and hoped she would. She did not promise that next term would be my last at the boarding school; she merely reminded me that the Shrovetide holiday — Maslennitsa — was less than six weeks away. Her image in my mind, all kindness, protection and refuge from every danger or threat, which had been a part of my childhood world, was slowly changing. My heart was hardening against her, as well as against the trials that lay ahead of me.
Now I knew at least what to expect. The chief porter, Klementiy, with his huge moustaches was no longer intimidating: I could almost detect a twinkle of welcome in his deep-set eyes. And old Dasha of the dormitories left me in no doubt that she was delighted to see me back. The familar austerity of the study-room was no longer chilling, merely indifferent; Fräulein Schmiedel’s gruff voice, Mílochka’s supercilious looks and Fatima’s slyness, though they made me writhe inwardly, no longer made me wonder what it was they found wrong with me. When I first came, I felt weak and small, and at the mercy of hostile forces all around me, and I was beaten down by them like a com stalk by a heavy rain storm. Now, like the corn that rises up again when the sun comes out, I was regaining my vitality. I discovered my inner resilience. Curiosity, playfulness, desire for adventure were returning.
Our movements within the school were rigidly controlled. We moved between the class-room, the dining-room, study-room and dormitory, using always the same corridors at the same time. There was no question of wandering freely from one room to another between lessons or meals. If we wanted to leave the study-room to go to the lavatory, we had to ask permission from the governess on duty, using the established formula. We asked the German governess: ‘Kann ich nach oben gehen?’, although the lavatories were not upstairs but on the same floor. We asked the French governess, more realistically and simply: ‘Puis-je sortir?’ The word ‘sortir’ being almost identical with the vulgar Russian word for lavatory caused a certain amount of amusement, but we dared not show that we were amused, dared not betray that we knew the vulgar word.
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