My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 13 страница
My last term at the boarding school passed off surprisingly quickly. My sister, on vacation from the university, came to take me home. It was a warm, overcast May morning, and we had been to the school garden to say good-bye to Mademoiselle Vinogradova, who was sitting with half-a-dozen older boarders, studying in the open air for their final examinations. As we were crossing the courtyard on the way out, my sister stopped to speak to a pale, languid girl who was reading by the open window of one of the class-rooms. Maroossia knew her elder sister and they exchanged a few remarks.
‘How much longer have you got at the school?’ my sister asked.
‘Another whole year!’ the girl sighed. ‘My sixth as a boarder . . . It’ll be your second,’ she deigned to notice me.
‘She’s not coming back as a boarder,’ said Maroossia. ‘She’s going to live with an uncle and aunt. ’
I heard her say this with a curious detachment: suddenly I became aware of the fact that I no longer cared very much whether I came back as a boarder or not. A thought flashed through my mind: how differently I would have felt if these words had been said at the end of my first term! Then it would have been a triumph and a joy indeed. But now there was a faint taste of bitterness in my acceptance of this news, no longer new to me. The great turmoil of feelings caused by separation had subsided; the feelings themselves had all but burned themselves out; there remained only a realization that good things are less good when they come too late. Liberation meant less to a ‘prisoner’ who had learned to tolerate her imprisonment.
Yet it was good to wear my own short frock again, to let my hands take care of themselves instead of always remembering to clasp them in front of my stomach, to be free from bare walls and corridors, and from the rule of dropping curtseys to all the teachers and dames-de-classe I happened to meet outside the class-room. It was good to see the strips of fields running past the window of the train and the way they turned sideways and came to a point in the distance like the sections of a great open fan. Wafts of heavy scent blew in as we passed copses of bird-cherry in bloom. ‘Are the apple trees still in blossom?’ was my first question to Maxim who met us at the station with the phaeton.
A surprising piece of news my sister told me on the way home was that Shoora Martynov was going to spend part of his summer vacation with us at our country house, Fyeny. Knowing that he and my brother did not get on at all well, I shared my puzzlement with Maroossia. She explained that my mother had had a letter from Shoora’s mother, who had to go into hospital for an indefinite period and was worried about her son not getting proper care or company while she was away and his father at work. I asked what was Madame Martynova’s illness. My brother, who was travelling with us and did not take kindly to the news, growled: ‘I bet she’s having another of her mad spells.’
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‘She’s had a nervous breakdown,’ said my sister.
‘It’s just another word for the same thing . . . Shoora is mad, too,’ muttered my brother. ‘I hope he’s not coming for the whole of the holidays.’
Without saying it, I hoped for that, too. We left our town house at B* a few days after my return from school. Nine months had passed since I last saw the country, and I was looking forward to going back with such keen anticipation that it was almost greed, an unwillingness to share my pleasure in it with anybody. I did not want to be distracted by visitors. As we drove up the avenue of lime trees towards the house,
I got off the seat and stood on the step of the phaeton, so that I could see forward and back along the whole of its length. Last time I saw it the leaves were turning yellow, it had a farewell look; and now it welcomed me in its spring freshness, yet it was the same . . . the same!
I was sure I recognized the very pattern of the shadows the trees threw on the ground beneath them, and I loved even the dust rising from under the horses’ hooves, and the way it stood, faintly pink, in the air behind us.
We were now approaching the house. Here was the willow on the comer of the orchard, an old tree so thick with new shoots that my sister had used it as a refuge from visitors; afterwards it had become my watch tower. Soon the white-painted front of the wooden house with its columned porch and a veranda appeared in full view across the flower garden, its beds glowing with jonquils and daffodils. The lilac bushes by the steps of the porch were in full bloom.
Inside the house there were bouquets of lilac on the tables in all the rooms, the whole house was scented with it. It was the hour between light and dusk, to me a bewitching hour full of poetry. Outside, the light was soft yet clear: through the wide cut in the trees the distant meadows still showed green and the river steely grey. Indoors, the colours of the chairs, the carpets, of the lilac itself were dissolving into different shades of grey, changing into their shadowy selves. I ran out into the garden. The sun was setting in the west, but in the east the sky was also turning red, and I stood, puzzled, almost frightened, until I realized that it must be the moon, rising to chase the sun off the skies.
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That night the moon was early awake,
And as she rose and raised her curtain red,
She saw the sun about to go to bed,
And cried: ‘Oh, stay and tarry —for my sake!’
‘Stay and tarry . . . ’ No, this will not do. ‘Stay and tarry’ is repeating the same thing. Surely the moon, Artemis, should be able to think of something better! The sun, Apollo, would hardly listen to such a feeble appeal. ‘Oh, stay a little’ . . .? No! ‘Oh, stay, beloved’ . . . Could she really call him ‘beloved’ if she had never seen him before?
I strolled across the flower garden, oblivious of my surroundings, seized suddenly by my poetic daemon. As I turned into the lime avenue, two small figures materialized out of the shadows beneath the trees. I did not at once recognize them. They remained silent and I peered at them for a few moments. ‘Mashka, Varka!’ I exclaimed. Still without speaking, they nodded and giggled. For the next minute or two we continued staring at one another. Even in the dark I could see how much they were already tanned by the sun; Varka’s nose especially was one mass of freckles.
‘You’ve come!’ Mashka said at last under her breath. And Varka added quickly and more loudly: ‘There are lilies-of-the-valley come up the other side of the brook... ’
My mother’s favourite flowers! Wouldn’t she be pleased if I brought her a bunch! Impulsively, I plunged forward.
‘Let us pick some!’
They hesitated, hung back a little.
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‘It’s dark by the brook . . . ’
‘There’s the moon! What are you afraid of? Ghosts? There aren’t any. Nothing can hide in the meadow. You should see the huge, long, dark corridors at the school! ’
‘Corridors . . . ’ Mashka repeated in an awe-stricken voice. ‘What are they for, these . . . corridors?’
‘Why ... to go from one room to another.’
‘Haven’t they got any doors?’
I was stumped by this simple question and used the speed of our advance through the shrubbery to avoid answering it. Just as we were leaving the shadows of the limes to step under the moon-drenched clouds of apple blossom in the orchard, Aniuta’s voice reached us, calling urgently ‘Lédochka! Where are you? Supper’s ready! Come in to supper!’
We ran as fast as we could. The heavy dew on the grass soaked my shoes and stockings; Mashka and Varka, their feet bare, tucked up their skirts. The small gate which opened on to the meadow was shut with a bolt from inside. The girls did not want me to open it, but led me to a loose plank in the fence which could be swung aside, leaving an opening big enough for us to slip through.
‘Pan Pozmtsky doesn’t know,’ Varka said confidentially. Pan Pozmtsky was my father’s bailiff. ‘If he knew he’d be very cross. He’d be cross if we undid the bolt before tomorrow morning. ’
‘Is Bronia home?’ I asked, only half-wanting to know, for Bronia, the bailiff’s son, was the only person I did not like meeting at Fyeny. Last summer he was still posing as a rejected lover, and I found his reproachful glances an embarrassment and a bore.
‘Isn’t yet . . . ’ Mashka murmured, and I sighed with relief.
The lilies-of-the-valley by the brook were full of dew and fragrance, so young that their little cups were more green than white. We plucked them hurriedly, not one by one but several together, mixed with grass.
Back in the flower garden the lamp-lit windows of the dining-room threw rectangles of faint radiance on to the flower beds, snatching patches of colour out of the thickening dusk. On the veranda stood Maroossia, peering into the distance, her elbows on the balustrade, her face propped with both hands. At the sight of her Mashka and Varka melted into the shadows. I ran up the steps of the veranda and put my bouquet to my sister’s face.
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‘Króshka, where have you been? Aniuta’s gone to the stables to look for you.’
‘I’ve been composing a poem, and then I’ve been picking these. I’m very hungry. Tell me, would Artemis call Apollo her ‘beloved’? I know they could never meet because . . . but still, she knew about him.’ ‘Artemis could love no one,’ Maroossia said. ‘She was cold, cruel, she hunted animals for pleasure. She had Actaeon killed because he saw her bathing.’
‘Why did she mind? And who was Actaeon?’
‘He was a young man hunting in the woods and he came upon Artemis bathing with her women. She thought he was spying on them. She did not like being seen naked — it offended her chastity — so she sent her dogs . . . no, it was Actaeon’s own dogs that tore him to pieces because she turned him into a stag. ’
‘What does chastity really mean and why is it so important?’ Maroossia demurred.
‘It’s ... a kind of convention. A chaste girl is supposed to have nothing to do with men.’
‘Nothing at all? Not even speak to them?’
‘Yes, she can speak to them, but never kiss or love them . . . ’ ‘Men’s faces scratch so . . . ’ I said after a moment’s meditation. The French window rattled and my brother appeared silhouetted against the lamplight.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded to know. ‘We’ve been having supper for the last half-hour.’
I held out my bouquet as we entered the dining-room, but it detained my mother’s gaze only for a moment: her eyes travelled at once down to my wet stockings and shoes.
‘You’ve stayed out in the damp all this time with your feet wet through! ’
‘Mamma, smell this lovely scent!’
‘You shouldn’t have picked them so late at night. They’ll give me no pleasure if you catch a cold.’
After having had my feet bathed in hot water and putting on dry stockings and shoes, I sat down to my favourite supper of buckwheat kasha with butter and milk, and a compote of dried fruit. We would have to wait for fresh fruit at least another month — and then it would be wild strawberries! I thought I could smell my lilies-of-the-valley above the scent of lilac which filled a vase in front of me, and I wondered whether my mother was enjoying it and why she so often saw my activities as a threat to my safety or health.
Three events stand out among the memories of that first summer from school: my ride on Sultan, my brother’s strange fight with Shoora Martynov, and a peasant wedding to which Aniuta took me.
Until then I only had an old pony to ride, but my mother at last agreed to my riding a ‘real horse’ which, however, was only Moor, a quiet animal without any initiative. He never tried to get in front of another horse, trotted or galloped only when other horses trotted or galloped and was impervious to any sudden stimulus which made other horses shy. Even so, my mother was full of fears of what might happen when I went out riding, and this made me nervous before a ride. As a rule I got over it after a few minutes, but the effort of keeping my fear under control often left me only half-able to control my horse.
Maxim was to accompany me on all my rides. He was a good instructor: he told me to keep the stirrup iron on the ball of my foot and never to pull too sharply on the bit. ‘ You can make the horse rear and fall right over on his back if you do that,’ he said. ‘And if your foot is right inside the stirrup, it’ll stay there when you’re thrown, and you’ll be dragged. Best to be thrown clean off.’
He had done his military service in the frontier guards, somewhere in the steppes of Southern Asia where wild ponies roam the countryside, and I could never hear enough about those days. He told me how difficult those ponies were to catch and how fiercely they fought, when captured, to get free again. I asked if he had ever tamed any of them himself.
‘I didn’t have the knack, báryshnia. There were one or two Bashkirs in our detachment who could do it. They knew the trick and they knew their ponies. You see, a horse that’s bom wild can’t be broken the same way as a horse born domestic. They don’t understand our language, to start with.’
‘Did you ever ride them yourself, Maxim?’
‘I sure did —after they’d been broken. They could go like the wind. So sure-footed they were too. Never a stumble.’
‘Go like the wind!’ This fascinated me. But the fastest I could get out of Moor was a medium-speed gallop. I hankered after my father’s horse, Sultan, and I seized my chance when once Maxim decided to exercise him by riding him when he went out with me. My father was still in town, and I saw this as an opportunity not to be missed. As soon as we were well out of sight of the house, I asked Maxim if he would change horses with me. He argued that I would not be able to hold Sultan, that if my mother came to hear of it he would have a lot to answer for, but I pleaded with him so insistently that in the end he agreed.
We dismounted. Maxim changed our saddles — I was riding sidesaddle - and lifted me on to Sultan’s back. Trembling with excitement and apprehension, I threaded the reins between the fingers of my left hand, just as Maxim had taught me. Sultan danced on the spot while Maxim tightened the girth. He hardly had time to mount Moor when we were off at a gallop.
Sultan’s gallop was so smooth and easy that at first I felt nothing but elation and pride. In a matter of seconds, however, he shot forward, leaving Moor a whole length behind.
‘Hold him, báryshnia !’ I heard Maxim’s urgent voice, its sound blown away by the rush of air past my ears. I needed both my hands to do this, but sudden alarm made me clutch the pommel of the saddle with my right hand, and I dared not let go. The cluster of reins in my left hand took all my strength merely to grip, 1 could not tighten them. Sultan laid his ears back and went ‘like the wind’. I knew that the sound of Moor’s hooves behind him was driving him to go faster and faster. I knew I could not possibly stop him. Trees, bushes, glimpses of earth and sky streaked past with a vertiginous speed. Thoughts raced through my mind even faster. Where was I coming to? How was it going to end? My mother had warned me . . . she was right . . . my father’s horse ... I should not have ... am I going to be smashed to bits? Am I going to be thrown when Sultan jumps? When? Where?
An obstacle loomed ahead: a low shed or the remnants of an old corn stack ... I could not tell: I could just see that the track turned sharply to the left and that someone was standing on the corner. What would Sultan do? Jump the obstacle? Swerve left at full speed? Shy away from the person who was standing there, still as a statue? Whatever he did, I could hardly hope to keep my seat. Staring fearfully ahead, I no longer listened to the sounds of the other horse behind me: I believed Maxim to be far behind. But suddenly Moor’s head appeared close to my left elbow, a broad hand reached out and seized my horse’s reins. Sultan’s head was twisted sideways just as he was bearing down on the obstacle in front. He reared and tossed his head. White foam flew from his bit. Maxim turned him off the track and brought him to a standstill in the corn.
The person who had been standing motionless, watching our approach, ran up to us. It was Maroossia. She was breathless with alarm.
‘What’s happened? Why were you going at such a speed?’
Maxim helped me down and was changing the saddles.
‘Can’t think what’s got into him,’ he muttered. ‘Been in the stable too long, that’s why . . . Too fresh.’
My legs were trembling with the tension suddenly gone. I begged my sister not to mention the incident to my mother.
‘But what has happened? I could see you from a long way off: one moment you were like dots on the horizon and the next you were bearing down on me. Did your horse bolt? You can’t imagine how you frightened me. It’s the second time . . . ’
I remembered this strange remark, and when we were alone the same evening, Maroossia strumming ‘My fire’s burning in the mist’ on the piano in semi-darkness and I sitting beside her, I asked her to explain its meaning. She told me that one summer on the estate, when I was eight months old and she in her ninth year, we were taken for a walk in the woods by my wet nurse, Matriona. Matriona was carrying me in her arms. When she saw there were a lot of mushrooms about, she sat me on the grass by a stack of birch logs and proceeded to pick them. Followed by my sister, she went further and further into the forest until they lost sight of me. Maroossia became very apprehensive. She asked Matriona to go back, and they made their way towards the clearing in the forest where they had left me — but there was no child there. Was it the same clearing? It had the grass and the stack of birch logs — yet there were many such in the woods. ‘I could swear that’s the place! ’ Matriona said. Maroossia was so terrified at the thought of losing me that she could hardly speak or move. She imagined that gypsies or wolves must have taken me. ‘Matriona began to shout, to call you by your name — as if you could answer her! And then, as we stopped and listened for a moment — a miracle! We heard your voice! We ran towards it and found you sitting under that stack, “exclaiming”, as Matriona described it, talking to yourself — or to things around you in your own language — perfectly happy!’
‘I’m glad I wasn’t crying,’ I said, complacently. ‘You see, I wasn’t afraid of the forest even then! ’
Shoora Martynov arrived at Fyeny half way through the summer vacation and stayed a fortnight. During that time he followed me about and tried to share in all my pursuits. When I played in the pile of sand by the veranda, making mountain roads and forests with bits of branches and grass, he incurred my brother’s mockery for helping me to plant them. When we played at ‘Kazaks and Brigands’ with my brother and our cousin Vera, who was staying with us at the same time, he invariably went all out to capture me, leaving Vera to be caught by my brother. This seemed to please my brother, who found Vera a willing victim. She would shatter the air with her screams and alarm my mother who was not accustomed to such violent displays of emotion, as neither my sister nor I were given to screaming.
Vera was the same age as myself but in some ways much more sophisticated. She shocked me by confiding that she did not really love her parents because they did not love her, and much preferred her younger brother and sister. She disturbed my conventional views on feminine beauty by declaring that her ideal was an English Miss with red hair and green eyes. Because at the time I was reading The Three Musketeers and had begun writing a novel about Henri Quatre and Marguerite de Valois, I maintained that a French girl with black hair and flashing dark eyes was the ideal, but I began to have doubts about it from that time on. Because Vera was such a screamer I could not take her seriously, but the effect of her personality persisted for a time after she had gone.
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