My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 11 страница
I did not realize that I said this aloud and my sister was standing behind me. She put an arm round my shoulders. Her arm was soft; everything about Maroossia was soft: her hair, the look in her hazel eyes, her embrace, which enveloped but never held one fast. She had come from Petersburg for the university vacations and was already at home when my brother and I arrived from M*. She was thinner than when I saw her at Christmas, and I heard my mother remark that she spent all her allowance on books and theatre tickets instead of feeding herself as she should, She had certainly brought quite a pile of books with her which looked different from the usual run. They were very small, had yellow paper covers and the words ‘Universal Library’ printed over them. I looked through a few of them. Almost all were translations of plays by authors whose names were new to me: Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Strindberg, Bjernson, and some of the novels of Knut Hamsun. I asked her whether she had seen all these plays on the stage. She laughed at my naivete, then told me of the wonderful production of The Blue Bird by Maeterlinck, which she saw when the Moscow Arts Theatre visited Petersburg.
I listened wide-eyed as she described how all the things in the children’s kitchen came to life: the dough in the tub began to rise and a large loaf of bread with a round face emerged from it; the sugar loaf on the table stirred and began to sprout long white fingers . . . The children in the audience, she said, squealed with delight.
‘The children in the play went in search of the Blue Bird. They found it in the ‘Place of the Unborn’ and carried it away in a cage, but accidentally they opened the cage and the Bird flew away.’
‘What a pity!’ I said.
Maroossia disagreed. She explained that Maeterlinck probably meant that imagination could not be kept in a ‘cage’ of any kind, and that the Blue Bird stood for something that we must always pursue but cannot retain - an ideal, a beautiful dream, perhaps . . .
I found her words disturbing: I wanted to believe that ideals could be attained and beautiful dreams realized. And if she were right - and I obscurely felt she might be — would it not be better to be a bird and fly over town and mountains and forests, and look down on them?
‘I would grow terribly dizzy,’ said Maroossia. ‘You know that I never dare look down when I am on a bridge or a church tower. If I did, I would probably throw myself over the edge.’
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The bells on the Catholic bell tower began to toll. The sound was more high-pitched than that of our church bells, more like a tenor voice than a bass.
‘Their Easter Eve service is tonight,’ said my sister. ‘A week earlier than ours.’
‘And this time I shall come to the midnight service with you,’ said I.
Memories of ‘first’ occasions become, no doubt, overlaid with later ones, but I believe that the feeling of that particular Easter has survived in my memory more or less intact over the years. It was the first time I was to be present at the midnight service, and I looked forward to it with awe, as to a revelation of a great and all-important mystery.
The drive through the streets at night was in itself mysterious: I could hardly recognize the familiar shops and houses. The streets were full of subdued animation: people were walking along the pavements, all going in the same direction. There were some children among them, and many girls were wearing white dresses under their overcoats. I, too, had a white dress on, with a new, light-coloured coat over it.
As we drove up to the church, I was surprised to see how faint was the light in its windows. But people were streaming in through the wide-open doors.
‘It’ll be very crowded and airless inside. I hope you won’t feel faint . . . ’ said my mother.
Just inside the entrance we bought our candles. A beadle, who saw us arrive, motioned us forward and went in front, making a little path through the crowd, murmuring as he went: ‘Be so kind . . . please . . . excuse me . . . ’ Near the iconostasis the throng was much thinner, and we stopped there, to the right of the praying desk at which a deacon was reading from a book with many coloured ribbons between the leaves.
The church was in semi-darkness with only a few clusters of candles burning before the most venerated of the icons — a large image of Mother and Child, a Christ with one hand raised in blessing, Saint Nicholas with his staff. Above, the vaulted ceilings and the embrasures of tall windows were peopled with shadows which extended to the lower arches and the recesses behind them. A few more candles were burning in those recesses, and their flickering light now and again snatched a glint of gold out of the surrounding penumbra. Blueish wisps of incense smoke trailed slowly across the half-lit spaces between the dark recesses and the brighter part of the church where we were standing. The deacon went on reading and chanting: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy upon us!’ after almost every sentence. His voice was mournful because Christ was still in His grave: the mystery of resurrection had not yet been revealed to the world . . .
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People continued coming in, gently working their way through the crowd so as to be nearer the iconostasis, and although my mother made me a sign which meant that I must not go on looking round, I could not refrain from glancing at the new arrivals out of the corner of my eye. Among them I saw many familiar faces: Father Ioann’s two grown-up daughters, Alexandra, with her husband and son, and Nela, the unmarried one; our family doctor, Mihailovsky, with his wife and adopted daughter, who was so boring to play with; the garrison commander’s two sons with whom I had danced so much at Christmas — they looked different without their grins — and . . . goodness ! I had almost forgotten about him . . . Shoora Martynov! He was craning his neck, looking in our direction over the shoulder of his mother who was wearing a large hat loaded with fruit and flowers. Should I have to kiss him if he came up to say: ‘Christ is risen’? The prospect threatened to destroy my reverently receptive mood.
Meanwhile two priests and their attendants came out of the side door in the iconostasis and walked, swinging their censers and intoning prayers round the plashchanitsa, the table symbolizing the tomb of Christ. It had been there since Friday, the day on which He died, and people came during these days of mourning to pray before it and kiss the feet of the crucified Jesus embroidered in silver on the purple cloth. Now the priests lifted it and carried it, singing, through the Royal Gates into the Holy of Holies while people stood silent with their heads bowed. The Royal Gates closed. Inside, the prayers went on while we stood waiting, holding our candles, unlit but ready . . . What was happening inside these closed Gates? What would we see when they opened again? The minutes of waiting dragged . . .
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Then, at last, the Royal Gates opened slowly, solemnly, and the procession filed out. A boy walking in front held up a large crucifix; behind him young men, who had now exchanged their dark cassocks for bright garments, came carrying banners with the images of Christ, His Mother and the Saints embroidered on them in coloured silks and gold. After them came the deacons in blue and silver vestments, with Father Ioann, the senior priest, in the centre of the procession, small and bent, yet impressive in his rich golden chasuble and purple velvet cap. The choir followed, singing in full voice a hymn glorifying Christ. The words were archaic Russian, yet familiar enough for me to understand their meaning:
‘Oh Christ, our Saviour, the angels in Heaven are singing of Thy resurrection; grant us pure hearts so that we, too, can glorify Thee here on earth . . .
Now little tongues of flame were springing up everywhere: people lit their candles from one another. The palms of their hands looked pink, half-transparent, as they sheltered the flames from the draught. The procession passed out into the churchyard and many of the congregation followed it. The rest stood waiting in the half-empty church, listening to the choir whose singing reached them in snatches as the procession walked round the church. Slowly the singing grew closer, louder, more jubilant. . . Here they were, coming back into the church, proclaiming at the top of their voices the miracle of the resurrection in the words which made my heart beat faster:
‘Christ is risen from the dead, by His death He has trampled down Death and has given life to those who are in their graves . . . ’
Father Ioann walked slowly up the steps before the iconostasis and turned to face us. Raising the crucifix which he held in both hands, he moved it to make the sign of the cross over the congregation, and said as loudly as his old voice would let him:
‘Christ is risen!’
The middle of the church answered him as one voice:
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‘In sooth, He is! ’
Father Ioann turned to his right and made the sign of the cross with the crucifix a second time, repeating: ‘Christ is risen!’ And the congregation on the left of the church replied in chorus: ‘In sooth, He is!’ Then he turned to his left, facing us; and, bending our heads to receive his blessing, we too answered him, loudly confirming the great good news he was announcing. The Royal Gates behind him were wide open and the main altar inside shone with white linen and gold. He turned and went inside.
The church was now ablaze with candelabras above and the candles in everyone’s hands. The choir was singing jubilantly: ‘Christ is risen from the dead! ’ A rustle and a ripple of movement was spreading through the church, a murmur of voices, saying: ‘Christ is risen’ and ‘In sooth, He is!’ The light of the candles made eyes shine and faces look young, and the emotion which I felt rising from somewhere deep inside me was not the ecstasy I had been hoping for but a kind of compassion, an urge to love everyone around me. Now Christ had conquered Death, no one, not even the little old woman with trembling hands whom I saw buying a very small candle on the way in, need be afraid of dying!
My sister was the first to exchange the three traditional kisses with me. The other members of the family followed her. The rare experience of being kissed by my father so confused me that I replied to his greeting by simply echoing his words ‘Christ is risen’, instead of saying ‘In sooth, He is!’ or ‘He is risen indeed! ’ Smarting inwardly under this humiliating mistake — which my father most likely had not noticed — I turned away only to be embarrassed further by finding myself face to face with Shoora Martynov. His mother stood beside him looking like a fourteen-year-old girl in her enormous hat. Both were leaning forward as if poised for immediate advance, and Shoora’s small piercing eyes were fixed on mine. Instinctively, I stepped back and trod on my father’s toes. He grunted in disapproval and I felt blood flooding my face.
‘Christ is risen!’ said Madame Martynova to my mother. ‘In sooth, He is!’ replied my mother, stretching out her hand for a handshake. ‘I wish you a bright, happy Easter.’ — ‘Thank you,’ said Shoora’s mother.
I curtseyed hurriedly to her, keeping my distance and wished her a ‘bright, happy Easter’. Surely, they must understand that we do not embrace mere acquaintances! But Shoora’s eyes were still persistently searching mine. ‘Happy Easter!’ he said and lunged forward. But Maroossia suddenly materialized between him and me. ‘Happy Easter, Shoora!’ she said, offering him her hand. And in the general movement of people towards the iconostasis, I managed to put more than one living obstacle between him and myself, a defence which he did not attempt to storm.
Other priests came out of the Royal Gates to bless us and to announce the news of the Resurrection, and finally Father Ioann appeared with a crucifix, and we all went up to kiss it.
‘Christ is risen! ’ Father Ioann said to each of us in his tired old voice, and this time I remembered to reply ‘In sooth, He is!’ and touched the priest’s cold, wrinkled cheek three times with my lips. I hesitated for a second whether to kiss his hand, as some people were doing, but decided not to do so. Hand-kissing - except women’s hands by men - was somehow linked in my mind with servility: did not serfs kiss the hands of their masters in the not so distant past?
As we came out of the church and the dew-scented air blew into my face, I felt unsteady on my feet, elated, yet troubled at the same time. Christ was risen . . . yet I knew the joy I was feeling was not the pure joy of the Saints. It was tainted by guilt. I was wrong to evade kissing Madame Martynova. Perhaps I should have kissed Shoora three times as well —because it was Easter. Why was I always thinking of him as very plain . . . more than plain . . . positively ugly? My brother had said that he looked like an ape . . . that he had a pig’s eyes. I should not have such thoughts on Easter night. Christ was risen . . .
The sky was still dark as we drove home, but much more blue than two hours ago, and the stars were pale. The dawn was approaching, the morning of the day when Mary Magdalene went to visit His tomb and met the Man whom she mistook for a gardener. I seemed to hear bátiushka’s rich voice: ‘And Jesus said to her, “Maria!” And she, recognizing Him, fell to her knees and cried: “My Lord!” Oh! if only I could have been in her place and met Him in a garden, at dawn, on Easter morning, and heard my name spoken by Him like that!
The transition from church to domestic scene could have been an anti-climax to any sensitive creature if the Easter table had not so much resembled an altar. A pagan altar no doubt — for the offerings displayed on it were those of turkey and ham and sucking pig, of coloured eggs and a pyramid of sweet cream cheese — but there were also flowers: pots of fragrant hyacinths, and garlands of paper roses and evergreens pinned to the dazzling white table cloth.
We did not sit down to the ‘breaking of the fast’ —an experience no less exciting to me for never having fasted. My father poured out some Madeira wine, and I drank half a glass with the others, and we all had some paskha, an Easter egg, and a slice of mazoorka, my brother cutting himself a slice of ham as well. I felt the wine flow through my body, warming me inside, tangling my thoughts, calming my scruples . . . My mother kissed me on the top of the head and told me that I must not stay up a minute longer. In my room my sister helped me to undress — Aniuta, no doubt, was ‘breaking fast’ with the other servants —and I dropped off to sleep, thinking of tomorrow, Easter day!
I remember that Easter morning as exceptionally bright, the sky high and blue, with half-transparent shreds of cloud drifting across and melting as they went. I knew the wind was strong as soon as I opened my eyes because tree-tops were dancing and I could hear the excited voices of the rooks. After breakfast I went to the orchard to wish ‘a bright happy Easter’ to the trees. The ground was sodden, and my feet in ankle-high overshoes sent up little spurts of water as I walked between the fruit trees. The first lines of a poem were beginning to sing in my head.
This morning trees will dance and sun will smile,
The rooks will fly around and shout for joy,
For Christ is risen, and all that’s mean and vile
Must disappear from earth, and . . . and . . .
I could not think of a rhyme for ‘joy’ and trudged through muddy grass and wet snow, searching for it and hardly noticing that my feet and legs were getting soaked.
‘All that’s mean and vile must disappear . . . ’ To me some of the underhand taunting and teasing of Mílochka and Fatima at school was ‘mean and vile’, and I tried to imagine them changed, transformed by having been in church on Easter night — but my imagination failed me.
Could those two girls ever be really affectionate and friendly? My own verses no longer sounded convincing to myself.
I crossed the orchard, pursuing the elusive rhyme and myself pursued by the inexorable rhythm of my verse. The log fence, darkened by many falls of snow and rain, was there for me to climb and look over beyond the edge of the cliff at the wide meadows which would soon be flooded by the Dniepr. On that Easter Sunday they shimmered in the sunlight, grey-blue with dampness, broken here and there by large dark patches of last year’s grass uncovered by the thaw. Half-way between that stretch of meadows and the horizon the curves of the river could be traced by the edge of the steep bank clearly emerging from the surrounding snow. I thought I could see the river swell and move, about to break its ice. When that happened, the waters would spread as far as the foot of our escarpment, almost as far as the blue ring of forest on the other side . . . The wind which came from there was full of the familiar, stirring fragrance of wet earth and melting snow. The wind was free . . . the river will soon have its freedom . . . the birds . . .
Would I be free and fly to Heaven
On Easter Sunday, bright and blue . . .
…………………………………………………………..
And sing my song to gladden you . . .
A whole line was missing in this poem! What could rhyme with ‘Heaven’? The uncompleted quatrain felt like a yawning chasm inside me, an emptiness almost of hunger. I was compelled to fill it, but with something that I really felt, something that was true.
If I were free and could take flight
This Easter Sunday, blue and bright . . .
I returned to the house by the back door which took me past the servants’ room. Aniuta put her head through the door and said with an arch smile: ‘There’s a visitor in the drawing-room.’
She helped me off with my coat and overshoes.
‘My goodness! Aren’t your stockings soaked! What would bárynia say?’
As she was helping me to change them, I asked: ‘Aniuta, who is the visitor?’
She smiled again.
‘You’ll see!’
She was so artful about it that I jumped to the conclusion that it would be a pleasant surprise. Could it possibly be my uncle Fyodor?
Breaking away from Aniuta’s ministering hands, I ran to the drawing room, flung open the door and nearly backed out again in my disappointment at finding that ‘the visitor’ was Shoora!
The effect my sudden entrance produced on him did not escape me. He stopped in the middle of what he was saying to my brother and stared at me for a few moments before he moved. Then, as if coming to life again, he seized an object which lay on a chair beside him and strode towards me, his eyes fixed on mine. His handshake was so strong that I screwed up my face, and with the other hand he held out his parcel with the words: ‘This is for you!’
I took it awkwardly, thinking of the fretwork box he gave me at Christmas, which had since fallen apart.
‘Shall I open it for you?’ he asked eagerly.
I watched his fingers with thumbs curving far backwards as he untied the string. ‘Thumbs that curve backwards denote a sensuous nature . . . ’ my sister had read out from some book. What was ‘a sensuous nature’? I vaguely knew — and disliked what I knew.
Shoora unwrapped the object he had taken out of the box. It was a large cardboard egg covered with shiny blue paper, the kind we used at school to wrap up our books, and overlaid with a fretwork pattern made of silver paper.
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