My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 9 страница
The lavatories were at the end of a long corridor which ended with a large, low-silled window overlooking the school garden. The doors of several class-rooms opened on to it, and half-way along its length was broken by a wide staircase leading down into a second vestibule and up to the assembly hall. In the evening the corridor was lit by a single electric bulb placed above the stairs, so that it was almost dark at both ends. The younger girls did not like making the trip to the lavatory on their own and usually went in pairs. I often paired with Tania or Stassia.
These brief moments of freedom had to be used. My first idea was an obvious one — to race one another to the end of the corridor, stopping just in time to avoid going through the window. My second was to creep upstairs to the top floor and peer into dark, empty class-rooms and through the clear windows of the assembly hall down into the mysterious, late evening streets. Then, as I descended the stairs, while the unadventurous Tania waited on the lower floor, it occurred to me to get astride the handrail and swing myself over on to the other side — the narrow ledge overhanging the deep and wide staircase bay. I almost heard Tania gasp as she watched me picking my way down along the edge of that yawning precipice. But I was feeling as I had not felt for months — elated, admirably daring, more than myself again.
Tania, terrified, begged me not to do it. But it was not enough for me to have impressed her: she was too easily impressed. I had to demonstrate my prowess to Stassia and also to Yuzia, an older girl, who plaited my hair for me in the mornings. She was one of the few seniors from the big dormitory who was not ‘stuck up’ and who paid us visits in the small dormitory. She usually did this disguising herself as a ghost. She made herself almost twice as tall as she was — and she was a tall, slender girl of fourteen —by holding her arms outstretched above her head, covering herself from top to bottom with a dark shawl and placing her small black school cap on top. She came in moving her arms, so that the ‘ghost’ appeared to he nodding its head, and, running up to our beds, bent over us menacingly, a gaunt, faceless giant, over six feet tall. We dived under our blankets, squealing faintly, and she laughed, peeped through the folds of the shawl to show us that it was really herself, and ran back to her own dormitory before the matron or any other grown-up had time to come upon the scene.
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The suggestion that we might play the ghost game in the corridor after we had finished our homework came from Yuzia, who, I suspect, felt, like myself, an urge to stretch her limbs and her imagination. On Mademoiselle Vinogradova’s duty day she bravely volunteered to ask her permission for us to play in the corridor. Stassia and Tania were allowed to join us. Needless to say, we did not invite either Fatima or Mílochka.
We made up the game as we went along. Stassia and I were the children of a wicked stepmother, living in a medieval castle. Tania was the nurse looking after us. Yuzia, the stepmother, forced us to go to a part of the castle which was haunted, hoping that the ghost would frighten us to death, and then she would inherit our fortune. Yuzia, in her double role of the stepmother and ghost, was to chase us when we entered her domain. It was this chase that provided the main thrill of the game.
Stassia and I, in our soft shoes, living our parts and impelled by a genuine terror, ran as if we had wings to our feet. But Yuzia could run even faster, and a touch of her hard fingers on our backs sometimes produced a scream which could be heard in the study-room. When this had happened a few times, Mademoiselle Vinogradova — for it was only on her evenings that we were allowed to play unsupervised — sent one of the girls to tell us that if we screamed again, we would have to come back and do something less exciting. But playing at ghosts without a single scream proved to be an impossible undertaking, and after a warning repeated on another occasion, we decided to think up some other game. Here my wish to show my prowess as a climber found its opportunity for satisfaction. I suggested we should play at being a circus. Yuzia was to be the cruel owner of the show, Stassia a maltreated young dancer, and I a daring acrobat who stood up for her against the owner. Tania was offered the part of a clown, which she could have played to perfection because of her plump, awkward figure and sad, round face. But poor Tania had no sense of humour, and she could not bear to see me walking along the edge of the stairs on the outside of the handrail, which was after all the main point of the game. So, after one or two attempts to carry on with the game, mainly to please me, she dropped out altogether. We continued without her. Neither Yuzia nor Stassia, however, attempted to follow my acrobatic example, and that gave me a wonderful sense of superiority, a much welcomed prop to my self-esteem.
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Tania had never really recovered from homesickness to any extent, and she looked as if she could not enjoy anything. ‘She’s always moping,’ Fatima said of her, scornfully. Perhaps because she was so depressed an unfortunate thing happened to her soon after the start of a new term.
One of the conventions observed at the boarding school was that girls were not to ask permission to go to the lavatory immediately after a meal: to do this was ‘bad manners’. That meant that sometimes we had to wait longer than we would have done otherwise. One evening, as we were finishing our French exercises, Tania whispered to me, asking if I would come ‘to the end of the corridor’ with her. I nodded, but as she got up to ask permission, Mademoiselle Vinogradova called us to her desk, to check up on our homework.
Neither of us was bold enough to do anything but comply. We filed up to the governess’s desk with our books. While Mademoiselle Vinogradova was listening to my translation of a French passage, I became aware that Tania was shifting from one foot to the other and looking more and more anxious. Fatima was eyeing her sideways with malicious amusement. Suddenly we heard a faint rippling sound as if someone was using a teapot to pour water on to the floor. The governess was the last to notice that something unusual was happening. Tania turned scarlet, then pale.
‘Puis-je . . . puis-je sortir?’ she babbled and rushed towards the door even before the startled Mademoiselle had time to reply.
Fatima was shamelessly grinning. I did not know where to look. A pool on the floor where Tania had been standing drew the eyes of every girl in the room: a wave of agitation ran over the tables.
All the heads were raised; there was suppressed tittering and whispers.
‘Girls, please be quiet,’ said Mademoiselle Vinogradova, recovering her poise. ‘Will one of you call Sasha and tell her to bring a mop?’
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Two of the older girls ran towards the door.
‘One is enough,’ said Mademoiselle firmly. ‘Rayévskaia, you can go back to your place now. Bazookova, will you read and translate what you had prepared.’
I opened my arithmetic book on the page where some ‘problems’ were marked as requiring solution, but hard as I tried I could see even less sense in them than usual. Why for goodness’ sake should anyone want to know how much faster a bath would fill if two taps were left running for five minutes, or one tap for eight minutes? My thoughts were on poor Tania and her problem: she had been gone for some minutes. Sasha, the maid, came with the mop and dried the floor, but Tania did not reappear. I could imagine what state she was in: her agonized recoil from the ordeal of returning to the study-room to face the furtive, mocking glances of the many girls who had witnessed her humiliating mishap. I felt the humiliation of it so acutely that I was suddenly seized with fear at the thought of ‘There but for the grace of God go I ... ’ I jumped to my feet and, interrupting Fatima’s reading (she gave me a devastating glance), went up to Mademoiselle Vinogradova.
‘Puis-je sortir, Mademoiselle?’
‘Certainement,’ she replied, a little startled, forgetting to reprove me for interrupting.
I almost collided with Tania just outside the study-room door where the corridor ended and the light was at its dimmest. She must have been standing there for some minutes, unable to pluck up her courage to come in. For a second or two we stood, peering at each other. In semi-darkness I could see her large eyes swimming with tears and her mouth quivering pitifully. I felt a dangerous tightening of my own throat and knew that I had to act or burst into tears myself. I seized Tania by the hand, whispered: ‘Come!’ and we ran along the passage back to the lavatories at the other end.
We sat down on a low window-sill by the wash basins, and Tania at once broke into sobs, laying her head on to my shoulder, a shoulder not quite broad enough for her rather large head.
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‘I’ve prayed and prayed, oh, how I prayed to God to make it so that it hadn’t happened . . . ’ Tania sobbed. ‘But it’s real, isn’t it? It did happen. You saw it with your own eyes? Tell me!’
I could not bear to speak, I merely nodded. I, too, was feeling bitter against God. Why could He not undo what had happened? It would have been such a small thing for Him; it was so desperately important to Tania!
‘Fatima will never forget it ... ’ continued Tania. ‘Nor will the others. Were they all laughing? Was Mademoiselle? . . . ’
I was able to assure her that the governess showed no sign of having been amused by what had happened and that she had discouraged gossip and tittering. Gradually Tania calmed somewhat and, though still frightened and ashamed, seemed to accept the inevitable. Slowly, we made our way along the corridor towards the study-room. Twice Tania stopped, as if she were about to turn and run back to the refuge of the lavatory again. I put my arm round her shoulders, telling her that she could not stay there all night, and that Mademoiselle was sure to send one of the big girls to fetch her sooner or later — which ‘would be worse’. In the end Tania marched into the study-room, looking as if she were going to her execution, and I, walking beside her, felt almost as if I were to be present at one. But all the turmoil inside us produced only a faint ripple outside. Some heads were raised and glances exchanged, but the heads were soon down again, intent on their books, no doubt aware that Mademoiselle was on the alert, watching them. Fatima was back in her place at our table, and she whispered to Mílochka, who sniggered just as Tania and I were squeezing ourselves between the form and the table to take our seats. The governess at once spoke to us, asking whether we had completed our homework, and telling us to go to our dormitory if we had.
Tania got ready for bed very quickly, pretending not to hear Fatima’s sardonic mutterings at the wash basins. As it was Wednesday, and we were due for a change of underclothes on Thursday morning, she was spared the embarrassment of asking the matron for a set of clean things. The mishap, however, could not be concealed: Fatima guffawed when she heard old Dasha mumble in astonishment as she collected our discarded linen from beside our beds: ‘Merciful Mother of God, these are soaking wet. How did the child manage 1 ’
Tania made no sound: she could cry almost noiselessly, but I knew by the slight shaking of her bed.
One morning soon afterwards I noticed her crying again in bed, while Dasha was fussing around, half-comforting, half-grumbling at her. Remembering the incident in the study-room, I at once thought the worst, and I was puzzled by her not getting up, although the bell clanged the second time, calling us to breakfast.
I was even more puzzled in the evening when I found Tania’s bed empty and covered up, instead of being ready to receive her. Alarmed, I questioned Dasha.
‘She’s in the big dormitory,’ mumbled the old maid and trotted off, clearly unwilling to enter into conversation.
In the big dormitory! I slipped in at the risk of being reprimanded and sent away by the ‘big ones’. There was Tania, in bed, quite near the communicating door. She closed her eyes when she saw me. Was she pretending to be asleep? I could not quite believe that she might not want to speak to me.
‘Tania, why have you been moved? What’s the matter?’ I asked. She began to cry. I stared at her, bewildered. Just then one of the older girls came to the next bed and saw me. She scolded me for being in the wrong dormitory, told me Tania was ‘all right’ and that she would be up tomorrow. Still puzzled, I returned to my own bed.
‘Been to see Pánova?’ Fatima asked me, with a note of mockery in her voice. ‘Know what’s the matter with her?’
‘No. What?’
‘She’s started her periods.’
‘What’s that?’
Fatima laughed derisively.
‘You don’t mean to say that you don’t know!’
‘Why should I pretend?’
‘You are a baby! Just to make me tell you . . . ’
‘I’m telling you — I don’t know!’
‘I don’t believe you. Anyway, it’s what happens to all girls. You go to the lavatory one day; you look down, and there’s blood ... It comes out of you. ’
‘It isn’t true! You’re making it up.’
‘You ask Pánova. That’s why she’s been transferred to the big dormitory. All the big girls have it.’
‘But Tania is the same age as you and I . . . ’
‘Some girls start earlier than others.’
There was such ghoulish pleasure in Fatima’s tone of voice that, however hard I tried to disbelieve her, the impact of her words struck me with an awful convincingness. What was this new threat, this inexplicable alarming thing which ‘happened to all girls’? How soon was it going to happen to me? Tania was only a few months older and she had succumbed already! She was very unhappy . . . Why, why did it have to happen? And why only to girls? I wished again I had been born a boy. If Fatima’s ‘revelation’ was meant to upset and frighten me, she succeeded only too well. My next few weeks at the school were haunted by the fear that ‘it’ was going to happen to me any day. The subject was too dreadful to discuss with anyone. Tania’s obvious embarrassment prevented me from probing her. Between the ‘big girls’, including even Yuzia, and myself stood an apparently insurmountable barrier of their superiority and my newness. Despite the communicating door between the dormitories, there was hardly any communication between us. The ‘big girls’ habitually ignored us. Mílochka was the only one whom they occasionally noticed and smiled at, and she made the best of her doll-like prettiness.
The musings aroused in me by Fatima’s remarks were so confused that even if I had wanted to write and ask my mother what it all meant, I could hardly have put it into words. Anyway, I felt that perhaps my sister was the best person to ask, but as weeks passed and nothing happened, the alarming thoughts began to fade away.
Shrovetide week, the Maslennitsa, was rapidly approaching, and in my imagination I was already eating the delicious pancakes of buckwheat flour, richly flavoured with fresh butter and sour cream, and listening to the festive tinkling of harness bells as troikas galloped past our windows through the snowy streets. My sister, my brother and I would go for a ride in a troika, and Maxim would race other drivers and beat them. And when we came back with steamy breath and glowing cheeks, my mother would be there, behind the samovar, and my father in the rocking chair, smoking a cigarette, with a newspaper on his lap . . . My mother with a question on her lips: ‘Did you keep yourselves well covered?’ . . . My father silent, just glancing up . . .
On the morning my mother was to come for me I got out of bed, tense with anticipation. Fatima, who had just returned from the washroom, looked at me, and suddenly began to grin and point a finger at my face.
‘See what she’s got!’ she shouted.
I passed my hands over my face but felt nothing unusual under my finger tips.
‘What is it? There’s nothing . . . ’
‘There is! There is! You’re covered with spots. You have chicken- pox ! ’
‘I haven’t!’ I shouted, alarmed, because Mílochka had been taken to the school sick-bay a few days previously with red spots all over her face. Stassia and Yuzia came up and stood staring at me, silently.
‘You have!’ Fatima shouted, triumphantly. ‘She has, hasn’t she? Look at yourself in a mirror if you don’t believe me!’
Barefoot, I ran across the cold floor to a looking-glass by the linen room door. Alas! Fatima was right: my face was covered with red spots. Yet I felt absolutely nothing. How could I be ill if I felt nothing? Surely, just having spots could not prevent me from going home!
Old Dasha, alerted by Fatima’s high-pitched exclamations, trotted up to see what was the matter. She raised her hands in a gesture of distress and commiseration and hustled me off to the medical-room. The nurse in attendance gave me one glance and said: ‘Chicken-pox. She should go to the lazaryet at once.’
I protested that my mother was coming this very afternoon to take me home. The nurse explained that I could not travel because I might get a chill and because I was infectious. I still protested desperately, with bitter sobs. Old Dasha stroked my hair and whispered that there would be many more Shrovetide holidays in my life, next year and the year after that . . . Kondratiy, the junior porter, was summoned from downstairs. Dasha wrapped me in a blanket, tied a warm shawl over my head, and he carried me across the yard to the lazaryet.
It was a morning of proper Shrovetide thaw, not uncommon at the end of February in our part of Russia. The quilt of snow which had covered the high stacks of birch wood in the yard had almost disappeared, and what remained of it was half-transparent like opaque glass. The twigs on a tree by the sick-bay were dark and swollen with drops of water hanging from them. Innumerable sparrows chirruped and fluttered by the pools where the cobble-stones had sunk and formed a hollow. The air was permeated with the scent of melting snow.
I took a gulp of this soft, humid air with my sobbing breath: it might have been my last breath if measured by the extent of my misery. God was indeed unkind! Why did He send me this chicken-pox just on the morning when my mother was to take me home for a whole ten days? If I had to have chicken-pox, why not a few hours later when I could have had it in my own home, with all the comforts and compensations of my mother’s and sister’s presence and care? As if I hadn’t had my share of unhappiness already!
My eyes were very sore and swollen when Mademoiselle Vinogradova came to visit me at the sick-bay. My tears flowed again when she told me that my mother had called and went away again, after asking her to tell me not to fret and that she would send me a parcel as soon as she returned home.
I never knew why my mother did not come to see me at the sick-bay. Perhaps she thought this would only upset me more, or decided to spare herself the ordeal of seeing me in a state of inconsolable grief. She may have been right, but I imagined she had been prevented from seeing me because I was ‘infectious’. My self-pity became swollen by picturing to myself the pity she must have felt for me. My grief grew in poignancy at the thought that my brother was luckier than I and was now travelling towards home in my mother’s company. Then it occurred to me that my mother might be quite contented in his company and not as grieved at leaving me behind as I had thought she was, and a bitter feeling invaded my breast.
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