My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 16 страница
‘Horrid,’ she muttered. ‘Nearly all of them Jewish.’
I recollected my mother saying that all the Jewish girls who could not get into my school because of the ‘five per cent quota’, went to the private school of Madame Zalyessky, which was Zena’s school. But before I could say anything more, Zena turned, glowering, towards me. ‘What was that girl laughing at? What did you tell her about me?’ ‘1 didn’t tell her anything.’
‘She looked at me and laughed. Why did she?’
‘You’d better ask her!’ I retorted, my irritation getting the better of my best intentions.
‘You’re saying this on purpose! You know I can’t ask her!’ Zena’s voice was now pitched on the note of angry tears.
‘Nor can I. I’ve told you already that I don’t know.’
A tense silence followed. I kept my eyes on the road before us as we drove out of town, following the bank of a small stream. There was a touch of late summer freshness in the air, and the grassy bank was still speckled with tiny flowers — the magenta of ‘Virgin’s tears’, the pale yellow and blue of ‘Ivan-da-Maria’, the bright, glossy yellow of ‘Chicken Dazzle’. But the pleasure I took in it was spoiled for me by Zena’s pent-up, hostile sense of outrage and my own annoyance at her touchiness. So that was how it was going to be! This stupid girl would be always taking offence at every word I said, watching out for every glance or gesture she could take as an insult or a reason for complaint.
There was pea soup and a rather dull meat course for dinner. I ate very little of either, and was conscious of both my uncle and aunt watching me. ‘You don’t seem to be very hungry,’ my uncle said at the end of the meal. I confirmed that I was not.
‘That won’t do,’ he said. What was it in his voice, I wondered, which made it greasy without properly oiling it? It made me wish he would gargle or use a bottle brush to clear his throat.
‘That won’t do,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t live without eating. Your mother wouldn’t approve if she knew. I think I’ll drop her a line and see what she says.’
‘Perhaps cousin Lisa makes special dishes for her,’ said Aunt Katia ironically, in her thin, mosquito voice.
I flushed — not with embarrassment but with anger. I noticed that Zena was enjoying the scene. As soon as the meal was over I escaped to my room and wrote to my mother, telling her how much I disliked the Martsinovskys’ food, and asking her to arrange with my aunt that I should be given a glass of milk and a slice of rye bread for my supper, instead of having to eat a regular evening meal. I added the description of my first day at school and of Zena’s behaviour on our journey.
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My anger having spent itself in the process of writing, I settled down to my homework. I had to do preparation in three subjects: arithmetic, geography and history, and as I pored over my books, I looked up now and again to rest my eyes on the green of the garden outside. Between one such glance and another, the green of the leaves and the red of the scattered clumps of dahlias faded, and the air grew dim with approaching dusk. I saw Zena walking slowly between the flower beds, her tousled head hanging down, her arms clasped behind her back. She was making her way towards the steps descending to the river. She seemed to be looking at her feet, but just as she was about to disappear over the edge of the slope, she turned her head slightly and I saw the glistening white of her eye. I was sure she had glanced at my window. She was curious to know what I was doing all on my own.
Suddenly restless, I got up and went through the front door into the vast court-yard, partly short grass, partly beaten earth. As I came down the steps of the porch, I looked back at the windows of the house, still unlit, and noticed at one of the windows a small white face peeping through. Aunt Katia. Were these two determined to spy on me?
At the far end of the yard there was a swing of a kind common in Russian villages. It consisted of a long stout plank and four lengths of rope. Two people could swing on it, standing at each end of the plank, but one person could get it moving while standing in the middle with one foot forward. That was what I liked doing, and I knew that I could push the swing as high as it would go, to the very limit of safety. If the plank rose higher than the beam to which the ropes were fixed, it could go right over it backwards and fall like a rearing horse over its rider.
I got on the swing and began to work it, gradually increasing its speed. With my back towards the house I was gazing westward, along the shallow valley of the stream almost invisible between its grassy banks and bushes of alder. From the dip at my uncle’s gate, the ground rose gently, coming up against the sky and cutting off farther view at a distance of about a mile. Just there a single birch tree was poised on the bank of the stream, the whole of its graceful, dishevelled silhouette outlined against the sunset sky. I had noticed it on the way from the school: it had a kind of presence, it was isolated, like myself, it spoke to me as a friend. I told myself that I must visit it, make myself known ... I greeted it silently across the fields, with every rising thrust of my swing in its direction.
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Every upward thrust carried me into the golden region of the sky where I lost sight of the ground. I imagined I was about to take wing and fly out into that golden world where there was no night. The sun was always travelling that way, so there could be no night there. I could follow the sun right round the world. If one always lived in the sunlight, there could be no sorrow, no envy, no resentment — only joy and happiness . . .
‘You’ve been a long time on my swing,’ said a voice behind me.
I knew it was Zena, so I did not trouble to look round. I stopped working the swing and let it slow down to a standstill. I got off and only then, looking my cousin full in the face, gave back as good as I got: ‘I suppose you’re afraid I might eat your swing?’
Zena was not very ready with her retorts. Her lips quivered, her eyes blinked, but only when I was already half-way across the yard did I hear her shout: ‘I’ll tell Mamma!’
I did not reply: I felt scornful of Zena and her futile threats. What did she think her mother could do to me? She could of course refuse to keep me, and my mother would have to find somewhere else for me to live. She would not like that - but then - she should have known!
Friends and Enemies
She should have known! But did she, in fact? I doubt it, for if she had known, she might have decided against letting me take such a close look at an unhappy marriage and a disunited family.
I soon noticed that my uncle and aunt never went out together and hardly ever spoke to one another. When my aunt had to mention her husband to someone else, she did not speak of him by name but as ‘he’. ‘He’ lived and slept in his study which contained a bed, a large, yellow bureau with a roll-top and some guns and swords displayed on the walls. My aunt shared a large bedroom with Zena. The two spent most of their time in that room, and the sitting-room was used only when they had visitors, which was rarely.
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I did not often see my aunt occupied, except in the garden tying up plants. Cooking, cleaning and even shopping were all done by Mavra, the honne-a-tout-faire. Mavra had an appendage in the person of her illegitimate daughter, Hovra, a wispy, flaxen-haired child of about six years of age. Stan, a lad of twenty, looked after the horse and did some gardening. As for my uncle, I think he took his retirement as an excuse for complete inactivity. He would sometimes stand outside the woodshed, watching Stan sawing up wood for the stoves, or walk across the flower garden and look over the edge of the slope at the river below or more likely at the boat, tied up by the landing stage. Most of the time however, he kept to his room and, to judge by the sounds of snoring which issued from it in the afternoons, he probably slept there quite a lot of the time.
I could only explain this strange situation to myself by assuming that my uncle and aunt had had a serious quarrel a long time ago and had never made it up. I even drew the conclusion that Zena’s obvious unhappiness was linked with her parents’ quarrel. What I found difficult to understand was her habit of drifting aimlessly about. She would not read, or colour pictures in a book, or row a boat. I often saw her in the evening wandering through the deserted garden, with the child Hovra following in her wake, or sitting on the swing, her feet on the ground, her head lolling, while the same child pushed the end of the plank, making it move gently to and fro. She looked bored and only half-alive.
It is perhaps not surprising that I was glad to escape from this sad household by going to school in the morning and loth to return to it after school. I do not think I was mistaken in believing that Aunt Katia disliked me and that Zena shared her mother’s feelings. My aunt, I was sure, resented the fact that I would not eat her food and that I was doing so well in school, while her Zena was backward. Zena was hostile because of the clashes we had had and because she thought I looked down on her. As for my uncle, I believed him to be indifferent, so long as Zena did not complain of me. If she did, I was sure he would blame me for the quarrel.
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All this made me feel as if I were living in enemy-occupied territory and I was at ease only when I withdrew to my room, though even there I was not sure I was safe from intrusion. I was rarely disturbed, however: Zena and her mother stayed at their end of the house, and the only person who knocked on my door at supper time was Mavra, bringing me my milk and bread, with Hovra clinging to her skirts and gazing at me in wonder with a pair of owlish, sleepy eyes. She never saw ‘báryshnia Zena’ so assiduous at her books.
I found work the best way of escaping from depression, and my taste for it increased as time went on. Preparation for the next day lessons took me two or three hours every evening, and I was also writing my ‘novel’ about Henri and Margot at the court of King Henry of Navarre. I rationalized my fondness for writing by telling myself that children could write for children much better than grown-ups, because after all they knew at first hand what children liked to read. Reading for pleasure took the rest of my time, and I now quite enjoyed reading in French and German, with a dictionary.
All this might make me appear as a bookworm, but I was far from being only a reader and writer of words. The urge to use my body was almost as strong in me as the need to use my mind, and during the months of attending school I badly missed what I had done at home: walking, riding and climbing trees. Organized games did not exist in Russian schools when I was a child; even boys’ schools had only gymnastics and the ‘Sokol’ drill, developed by the Czechs. In my school we had gymnastics without apparatus of any kind twice a week. We were also taught ballroom dancing, and often danced in the intervals between lessons. But that was not enough for me, and by Saturday afternoon — we had classes on Saturday morning — I was longing to be out in the open air, doing something physical.
On my first Sunday at the dacha I made an excursion up the valley of the little stream and had a good look at the solitary birch tree which until then I had only seen from a distance. At close range it proved to be a very comely tree, and as it had been my habit at home, I spoke to it and told it how much I liked it and that I would come again to visit it.
I should have liked to explore the birch groves on the opposite bank of the river which crossed my uncle’s property, but there was no bridge and I did not want to ask my uncle for the use of his boat and oars, for fear of being refused. Even if I were allowed to use them, I was sure Zena would protest and claim them as her own, for, like her mother, she was morbidly possessive with regard to every bit of family property, and she watched me unremittingly for any sign of trespassing.
This state of tension between us was brought to a head by a trivial incident which, however, proved an important turning point in our relationship, and perhaps in the development of my own character.
In the far corner of the flower garden there was a pile of sand which may have been put there for Zena’s play or for sanding the paths. I was still enough of a child to like playing with sand, and one Sunday morning I spent an hour making hills, caverns and winding paths in the side of this neglected pile. I left it to go in to lunch, after which I went to read in my room. I was sitting at my work table in front of the window and, as I raised my head from my book, I saw Zena in the flower garden, crouching in front of the sand pile, busy with a stick.
I leapt up from my chair and rushed through the garden door and across the flower beds with a speed that the Furies might have envied. Zena, with her back turned, did not hear me approach until I was standing right above her. She had dug up all my constructions and was aimlessly pushing the stick into the sand heap, making deep, round holes.
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked, enraged, but trying not to shout.
She started, then looked up at me, her sad baby face distorted in a grimace, half-smile, half-tears.
‘You’ve no business to make things out of my sand,’ she said.
I was so angered by what she had done that this silly reply left me speechless. Instead of telling her that she was ‘a silly baby’, I pushed her, and she sat back on the ground in a most undignified way. From that position she could not retaliate, and she knew it too, for she did something I never expected a girl of twelve to do in the circumstances. She broke into a howl of outraged impotence, while I stood looking down at her with scorn and disgust.
She was heard in the house. My aunt appeared in the window. My uncle came out of the garden door and walked across to us.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked in his ‘unoiled’ voice. ‘Why are you crying, Zena?’
‘She . . . p-pushed me . . . ’ Zena wailed.
My uncle turned his blood-shot eyes at me.
‘She smashed something I had built,’ I said. ‘I didn’t push her very hard and she isn’t hurt.’
‘Come indoors, Zena,’ said my uncle. ‘It might be better if you two keep apart.’
He led her away, still weeping. Zena looked so miserable when she cried that for the first time I felt a pang of pity for her, and a touch of remorse. The image of her crumpled face and red eyes pursued me as I made my way up the valley to walk off the anger I was still feeling, as well as pity. Silly baby! She had looked so ridiculous when she sat there, bawling with rage ... It was easy to make her look ridiculous because she was so backward. It was almost too easy . . . hardly worth while . . . And now my uncle and aunt would scowl at me for the rest of the week, and probably write to my mother and complain, and my mother would write me a reproachful letter — all this because of Zena’s stupidity and touchiness.
I walked as far as my birch tree, stopped under it and put my arms round its smooth, while bole. It rustled faintly in the breeze; its leaves fell around me like a shower of small, golden coins. I imagined it standing there, stripped and alone, all through the autumn and winter months, and the snow so deep round it that I would not be able to get across to visit it, and I pitied it as I pitied myself.
The dusk was gathering when I returned to the dacha. My uncle came out of his room as I was passing his door.
‘Look, Leda,’ he said, ‘I’m responsible for you to your parents. This is not the country round your estate where you know every peasant, boy and girl. I won’t have you going out for long walks in the dark.’
I replied that it was not dark when I went out. He told me that I must be inside the gates before it got dark.
I hurried off to my room. So that’s how it was going to be! They would keep me in now! They were determined to make my life with them as unpleasant as they possibly could. They were my enemies. And I would have to live in their house for years . . . perhaps until I finished school.
My glass of milk and two slices of rye bread were waiting for me on my work table. I grew calmer while I was eating, and soon afterwards got ready for bed. I closed my eyes, but Zena’s face was still with me: I could not stop thinking about her. She was tiresome and silly . . . but need she be my enemy? I could hardly hope to get her parents to like me, but perhaps I could do something to make Zena like me better than she did? And in a sudden surge of determination I decided that I could, and would.
This was a clearly reasoned-out and conscious decision. I promised myself that I should not say in front of Zena anything that might wound her amour propre. I would talk to her as to a younger sister, rather as my sister talked to me. If need be, I would help her with her homework. I would show her the nice corners on the estate which I had discovered and kept secret. I would never again lose my temper with her. Having settled it all in my mind, I went to sleep much relieved.
I do not know whether it is uncommon to make a decision of that kind at the age of twelve. What surprises me even now, when I look back on it, is that I was able to adhere to it so firmly and consistently. I have made such decisions in later years but have never again succeeded in changing the character of a relationship so radically as I did that with Zena.
It was not easy for me. I had to curb my pride before I could take the first step towards a rapprochement, and then to control my natural spontaneity and watch my own behaviour almost as closely as I watched Zena’s.
On our way to school the following morning I told her what lessons I was going to have and described the teachers and some of the girls. Zena listened, silent, unsmiling, incredulous, as if I were telling her some kind of fairytale. She did not volunteer anything herself about her own school. When I joined her again after school, she met me with a glance from under her brow, half-mistrustful, half-hopeful - an expression I had often noticed in the eyes of a maltreated dog. I was very compassionate towards animals; to see them suffer wrung my heart. Zena’s glance affected me in the same way. I smiled at her, and slowly, irresolutely, she smiled back.
As we drove along the bank of the stream, I pointed out my birch tree and told Zena I often came to visit it in the evenings. ‘There are no other trees near it: it must feel lonely sometimes,’ I added.
I had not expected the effect my words would produce on Zena. Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Well,’ I said hurriedly,’ next time I go to visit it you’d better come too. With both of us there, the tree will have quite a party!’
Zena suddenly laughed. Her face was a strange sight: eyes brimming with tears, mouth distended with laughter, shoulders shaking, locks of curly hair dancing on her forehead.
‘Yes, quite a party! ’ she repeated. Then, raising her head and looking straight at me, she said with a kind of passion: ‘I knew you went to that tree every evening! I saw you!’
So she had been spying on me! I was surprised to feel so little annoyed at my suspicions being confirmed.
‘I don’t go the same way every evening,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I walk along the river. I wish I could get over to the other side . . . ’
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