My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real 23 страница
I managed to wash my face and get back to the class-room just before the teacher entered it. Anna Avdyéevna gave me a look of cold disapproval from behind her desk. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second, and I knew that she knew that I knew . . .
I sat through the lesson in a state of complete absorption with my bitter thoughts. Fortunately, I was not ‘called out’ and so was spared the humiliation of displaying my unpreparedness. At last the bell rang for the five minutes’ break. I waited until the class-room emptied, then went up to Anna Avdyéevna, who had just risen from her chair. Trying hard to control my voice, I asked why she had refused her permission for me to dance the Boyar dance.
She pretended to be surprised at my question. Avoiding my eyes, she asked, didn’t I realize that taking part in these important anniversary celebrations was a privilege, and that I, by refusing to conform to school discipline had disqualified myself for such an honour?
‘So this is your revenge?’ I blurted out.
She did not deign to reply, just raised here eyebrows at me and sailed out of the room.
Until this incident I had managed, although uncomfortable under the cloud of Anna Avdyéevna’s displeasure and disapproval, to continue leading a fairly normal life at school. The excellent relationship I had with most of the teachers, as well as the knowledge that my classmates, with a few exceptions, were ‘on my side’ provided consolation and support. Her ‘act of revenge’, however — for I continued seeing it as such — gave me a bad shock. I felt her persecution to be so unfair that merely to think of it made me ill. The strain under which I was living began to show in my appearance, in loss of appetite, and in lapses in concentration during lessons.
I could not conceal from Zena what was happening; then Aunt Katia commented on my lack of appetite. Zena must have whispered something to her because she suddenly questioned me about Anna Avdyéevna.
I was in no condition to pretend that all was well, and when my aunt heard of the incident of the Boyar dance, she became suddenly belligerent and declared that it was her duty to intervene. She was going to write to Anna Avdyéevna.
I did not know whether to beg her not to, or to welcome it. What was she going to say? I had little hope that anything she could say would improve the situation, yet did not feel strong enough to protest.
After half an hour’s scribbling in frowning concentration, Aunt Katia showed me her letter. It ran something like this:
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Highly respected Mademoiselle Saburova!
My niece, Lydia Rayévskaia, has told me that you had decided to punish her for some breach of discipline which, in fact, she did not commit. When she refused to accept the punishment, you began to express your displeasure by acts of petty persecution unworthy of a lady of your position and birth. This is having a very harmful effect on my niece’s health as well as on her ability to cope with her homework, which I believe to be just as important — if not more so — as your idea of discipline. I should therefore be greatly obliged to you if you would cease worrying and upsetting my niece, who is, in any case, innocent of the transgression for which you are punishing her.
Yours respectfully, Ekaterina Martsinóvskaia.’
I agreed to hand this letter to Anna Avdyéevna in school on the following day. I noticed that she flushed slightly as I placed it on her desk and that she did not open and read it in the class-room but took it away with her when she left the room during the break.
Since Mademoiselle Vinogradova had left the school to get married, Anna Avdyéevna had obtained her post of a boarding school governess, in addition to her duties as our dame-de-class, and had come to live in a room at the school, next to the boarders’ study-room. We were all curious to see what her room was like but so far only the devoted Liuba Komaróvskaya had stepped over the privileged threshold once, when she was asked by Anna Avdyéevna to help her bring in some books. ‘It has lots and lots of photographs in frames,’ she whispered confidentially when her classmates asked her to describe what she had seen. We suspected however that she had not been much farther than the threshold: Anna Avdyéevna liked keeping her distance and her prestige.
I was startled that day when, on returning to the class-room after the break, she walked up to my desk and spoke to me. My schoolmates were startled, too, and on the alert to hear what she was saying, for they had been watching the feud between us and wondering how it would end. But Anna Avdyéevna spoke so quietly that only the two girls on either side of me. Fibikh and Bielynóvich, heard what she had said.
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‘She asked you to come to her room after lunch!’ whispered Alma, her small round eyes grown even rounder with wonder.
‘She’ll saw away at you again,’ was Ania’s comment.
If adults could remember and be honest with themselves, they would concede, I think, that the emotions of childhood and adolescence are infinitely more intense than those of later life. The body can be overwhelmed by them; they are as much physical as mental, and can drain away all strength or double it, as the case may be. I dreaded this rendezvous with Anna Avdyéevna. As I stood outside her door about to knock, my reluctance to face her turned to physical nausea. I forced myself to knock. Her voice answered in French: ‘Entrez!’
As she came forward to meet me, she looked somehow different — not the official Anna Avdyéevna I was accustomed to see in class, nor the over-sympathetic comforter I knew in my early days at the boarding school. Her face seemed younger and softer, her eyes wandered over my face with a curiously searching expression. She gestured me towards a small sofa beside a round table on which stood several framed photographs, while she herself sat down in an armchair opposite and continued looking at me.
The room was large, rather dark, with only one window overlooking a corner of the courtyard. It was full of furniture: chairs, tables of different sizes, étagères with photographs and knick-knacks. The end of a brass bedstead covered with a white bedspread showed from behind a screen. One of the photographs, of a young man in officer’s uniform, looked very much like Anna Avdyéevna. ‘Her brother?’ the thought flitted through my mind. This sudden glimpse into Anna Avdyéevna’s private life had the effect of sapping my last line of defence.
‘Your aunt’s letter upset me very much,’ said Anna Avdyéevna. ‘She accuses me of persecuting you. Is that the impression you gave her of what was happening?’
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My cup was already full when I entered the room, and now this question, framed like an accusation, made emotion spill over the brim.
‘My aunt could see herself . . . ’ I began and could not continue.
‘What could she see?’
Try as hard as I could, I was no longer able to hold back my tears, tears of outrage and self-pity which had been choking me for days.
‘That you were upset?’ ... I heard Anna Avdyéevna’s soft voice, muffled further by the noise of blood in my ears. ‘But what about me? Have you thought of the position in which you put me before the class? You defied my authority in their presence. Now they know that this can be done, how can I maintain discipline or keep the respect of your classmates?’
I was in no condition to indicate that I could see her point, which in fact I could, but even so, my sense of justice and my pride made it impossible for me to say I regretted what I had done. Anyway, I could not speak at all; I hid my face in my hands and sobbed. A swish of a dress, a sudden giving of a cushion on which I was sitting and an arm round my shoulders startled me into realizing that Anna Avdyéevna had sat down beside me.
‘Don’t, don’t,’ she said, soothingly. ‘There’s no need to cry so . . . We won’t speak of it again.’
She drew me closer to herself so that my head rested on her breast.
I felt her breath on my hair and her lips touching my forehead. My head swam with the heat of emotion, of tears and of her nearness. For a few moments I felt as if I were going to faint. Anna Avdyéevna gently patted my back. She produced a handkerchief and started drying my eyes as if I were an infant. I suddenly thought this ridiculous and began to laugh. Anna Avdyéevna laughed, too.
‘What a child you are, really! Tears and laughter —all at once!’ Her comparing me to a child made me sober up at once. I found my own handkerchief, dried my eyes and stood up. My head was still humming, but the mist around me had melted away.
‘You should bathe your eyes in cold water before you go back to your class,’ said Anna Avdyéevna.
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I let her guide me to the wash-stand and dabbed my eyes with a corner of her wet towel. Although all seemed well between us now, I was anxious to get out of this enveloping privacy as quickly as possible. I slipped out of her door, hoping I would not be noticed, as if I had been trespassing on a forbidden territory.
My Several Selves, Imaginary and Real
Lermontov wrote of his early passion, at the age of eight, for a little girl whose name he could not even remember. Yet he recollected as a grownup man the turmoil and confusion into which her presence used to plunge him: at that distance in time he could still feel some of the violent emotion he had felt then. ‘Passionate love at such an early age,’ he wrote, ‘denotes a nature rich in gifts for poetry and music.’ As I read this, I envied him. I wished I could have fallen in love at the age of eight — but there had been no one among my early play companions who could possibly arouse such strong emotion in me. The demands of my imagination were always far ahead of reality.
In Russian love is a ‘serious’ word: it is never used lightly as it is in English. ‘I’d love to come,’ says one friend to another when invited to a party. ‘Give my love to so-and-so,’ scribbles another at the end of a letter. A Russian would reply to the invitation: ‘I’ll come with the greatest pleasure,’ and he would write at the end of the letter: ‘Yours with sincerest greetings,’ or ‘Please bow to your friend on my behalf.’ He would regard it as an absurd exaggeration or as the height of insincerity to speak of love to mere acquaintances or friends.
I pondered on the meaning of love from quite an early age and knew that I loved my mother and my sister, all the animals on the estate, and all the aspects of Nature which surrounded me, and of other human beings probably the coachman Maxim. I realized slowly, with compunction and some anxiety, that I did not really love my father or my brother. As for my play companions, I was fond of some of them, while I merely accepted others, and I did not expect them to be more attached to me than I was to them.
As a small girl of nine or ten, I had been attracted by one or two handsome young men among my parents’ friends who came to the house on New Year’s day or on Easter Sunday, or who took part in picnics arranged by the Club. This awareness of male charm did not amount to much more than a fleeting, half-conscious need to be noticed by them, and a pleasure at any small mark of attention from them. Even at that age I tended to be selective: though I liked to dance with Monsieur Rodionov and to read my poems to Mitya, I did not think they were good-looking and treated them exactly as I did any other adult of either sex.
If loving was a serious matter, ‘being in love’ or ‘falling in love’ was seen as an embarrassing thing which boys and men did quite often but which girls had to avoid at all costs. Bronia, our bailiff’s son, had been ‘in love’ with me, but I felt most indignant at the suggestion that I could be in love with him. I declared in everyone’s hearing that I could only fall in love with a prince.
‘When you fall in love, he will be your prince, whoever he is,’ said Nela, Father Ioann’s daughter, a spinster of twenty-five.
‘Never!’ I retorted hotly. ‘He’ll have to be a real prince. I won’t marry anyone else.’
My first experience of falling in love, brief as it was, occurred rather late to qualify me for Lermontov’s ‘nature rich in gifts of poetry and music’. Yet it was partly the effect of music, the highly exciting, dynamic music of Rossini, which made me crave for the company and conversation of the actor who sang the part of The Barber of Seville.
I was twelve at the time. A small opera company was visiting B* during my school holidays, and my parents took me to the premiere. I have no recollection of where my brother and sister were at the time; what I remember clearly is sitting between my parents in the front row of the stalls, emotionally on tip-toe with excitement and delight, as the orchestra galloped zestfully through the brilliant overture. Then the curtain wept up and at once my imagination was set on fire. With innocent eye and ear I watched and listened; I participated in the actions of the characters, I took sides for or against them. I was captivated by the quick, gay and clever Figaro. I must have beamed with admiration when he came to the footlights, a tall, slender figure in red breeches and a bolero trimmed with gold braid, to sing his famous aria: ‘Figaro here, Figaro there . . . ’ I clapped furiously with the others as he bowed and smiled at me! The thrill I experienced at this mark of attention was so distinct and new in quality that it gave me a shock of surprise.
As I went to bed that evening, my head was full of tunes and visions of The Barber of Seville, the image of the barber himself persistently in the foreground of my recollections. I lived through the whole story again, wide awake, agitated with regret that it was all over, hankering after the repetition of the experience, after the concrete presence, the voice and smile, of the handsome young man in red and gold.
My excitement and pleasure were at their height again when a couple of days later I was taken to see Rigoletto. I enquired whether there was a baritone part in this opera, and awaited with tense anticipation the entry of the court jester, whose part I expected to be sung by the irresistible barber. Rigoletto, however, was not Figaro: he hobbled about the stage in a dark cloak, looking as if he really were a hunchback, and although I was impressed by his singing, and moved almost to tears by his distress on discovering that the girl he had killed was his own daughter, my feeling for him was not admiration but pity mingled with horror. There was no one in this drama whom I could admire: the duke was a scoundrel, the girl a silly goose. I went home saddened and vaguely disappointed.
It was the custom in provincial Russia for the leading citizens of a town to invite the visiting company of actors to their homes. My parents’ house was open to them one evening and many came. As I entered the drawing-room buzzing with conversation, my mother was talking to a tall young man with hair as blond as my brother’s. She called me up.
‘Here’s one of your great admirers — my youngest daughter,’ she said. ‘She’s seen Rigoletto and The Barber of Seville.’
The young man smiled and, as I gave him my hand, kissed it.
‘I’m greatly honoured. It’s a joy to please someone whose judgment is fresh, fair and unbiased. You’ve seen both Rigoletto and The Barber? Well now . . . would you mind telling me which you liked best?’
‘The Barber of Seville,’ I replied without a moment’s hesitation.
The young man laughed delightedly.
‘I very much hoped so . . . But tell me ... of the two baritones, which do you think was the best?’
I was nonplussed. I had compared the characters and their external appearance: it never occurred to me to compare their voices. Conscientiously fumbling for a reply, I caught my mother’s eye on me, trying to convey something, but I was unable to guess what it was.
‘Was the Barber’s voice better than Rigoletto’s or the other way round?’ the young man pressed me for an answer.
‘I think they were about the same . . . ’ I ventured at last.
He looked disappointed, yet he laughed again.
‘Didn’t you recognize him?’ my mother asked me afterwards. ‘He was the Barber. ’
‘He! But the Barber was dark . . . with jet black hair!’
‘He wore a wig on the stage. He wanted you so much to say that his voice was better than Rigoletto’s.’
He was my Barber! And I had failed to please him! I could have wept with vexation and impotent regret, an early foretaste of many subsequent failures and regrets . . .
As I read Pushkin and Lermontov, I ‘fell in love’ with Oniéghin and Pechórin. These Byronic young men, handsome, elegant and disenchanted, fascinated me by their complexity. I was aware that part of their attraction consisted in that they themselves were apparently unable to fall in love, at least not until it was too late. No doubt, I thought, that was the reason for their unhappiness. I put myself in Tatiana’s place and shared her humiliation and distress while Oniéghin was sermonizing her in the garden. I went through agony with Princess Mary while Pechorin was explaining to her why he had been playing cat and mouse with her feelings. And then, my thoughts escaping my control, took the bit between their teeth: a secret voice whispered: ‘But you are not Tatiana . . . not Princess Mary . . . you are different . . . perhaps if Oniéghin or Pechórin met you, they might have . . . ’ Oh! what a triumph it would be! What deep satisfaction! Like striking fresh water from a rock and making a desert bloom! To open a world of love and happiness to the loveless and unhappy, to be the person through whom this regeneration is effected — an infinitely seductive, tantalizing fantasy — how many an adolescent girl is haunted by it, how many a young woman hopes to realize it in her own life? Even then I was vaguely aware that it was a dangerous fantasy and that the whole matter of loving and being loved was full of hidden pitfalls: I was aware of my own extreme vulnerability. My first love, my mother, had wounded me deeply by sending me away to boarding school and then ignoring my desperate appeals for rescue. Anna Avdyéevna, whom I began to love for the affection she showed me, had alarmed and repelled me by her excessive expectations and demands. Perhaps it was better, after all, to keep my heart on a tight rein. But my heart was leaping forward eagerly towards new experience. And again it was provided by a play.
A repertory company was visiting M* in the winter of 1914. Their repertoire included plays by Shakespeare and Schiller, as well as La Dame aux Camelias by Dumas. The school authorities could forbid us to attend any of the plays, and we were told through our dames-de-classe that La Dame aux Camelias was ‘unsuitable’ for us and we were not to try to see it. We could go to see Shakespeare or Schiller if we wished. My uncle was not very agreeable to sending the horse to fetch me from the theatre late at night, but after some discussion, he agreed to do it just once, and I chose to see Hamlet.
From the moment I heard the young actor, dressed entirely in black and wearing a medallion on a gold chain, utter the bitter aside: ‘A little more than kin and less than kind . . . ’ I was captivated and held under his spell for the duration of the play and for several days afterwards. I felt as if a deep affinity, almost a bond existed between us which made his conflicts, his doubts and sentiments my own. How can I account for the intensely moving effect these words had on me except by assuming that they touched off my unconscious resentment against my own father? Hamlet’s rebellion against his parents was smouldering in my own breast. I had never had the courage or the opportunity of defying my father, and now Hamlet was doing it for me! His devotion to the father who died by his step-father’s hand, coalesced with the image of an ideal father in my mind. Then came his monologue beginning with the familiar phrase: ‘To be or not to be . . . ’, so faithfully expressing my own agonized questionings on life and death, that in my adolescent arrogance I wondered why I had not written it myself. Moreover, these words were spoken by a young man who looked like the prince of my fantasies and for whom I felt an admiration and compassion verging on love, such as made me wish I could be his Ophelia, yet not fail him as she had done.
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