pot-bellied, anything but straight and 'popindicular'.
'Every man's keen to snatch his titbit from life,' he said. 'And that's
what everyone should go after, it's only natural, man is made that way.
But will such a titbit guarantee security-that's another matter.'
Stroke, stroke, stroke, five, twenty, a hundred...
'Now take me. I got into a difficult atmosphere from a child, and I
could never count on my mother's labour power. That was out of the
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question. On the contrary, when our domestic affairs went to wrack and
ruin and my father, accused of horse-stealing, was sentenced to
imprisonment, it was I, and no other, who was obliged to become the
breadwinner.'
Stroke, stroke, fat one, thin one, crooked one, five, twenty, a
hundred...
'The saddest thing of all was that my father, on coming out of prison,
took to drink, and when a man indulges in liquor his house goes to
wrack and ruin. Then death struck him down, most sudden and
untimely, being the result of his skinning the carcass of a horse.'
I know exactly what happened afterwards to my teacher's father. He
became bloated and 'the coffin they'd started to make had to be altered
in a hurry, because the figure of the dead man was three times its living
size'. I once dreamt of this horrid death.
Stroke, stroke, stroke... The pen squeaks, stroke, blot...
'And so our family hearth became desolated. But I did not lose heart
and did not become a burden to my mother at the age of eleven.'
My teacher looks at me. Though I'm only ten, I begin to fidget
uneasily on my stool.
'I entered the employ of a restaurant, and became a servant and
errand-boy, but was no longer an extra mouth living on my mother's
earnings.'
My mother is sitting at the same table, listening to him spellbound.
She is mending shirts-Father's shirts-and I know who she is mending
them for. It is with presentiment of ill that I look up at my mother's pale
face, at her black hair parted in the middle, at her slim hands—and turn
back to my strokes. I feel like drawing one long line through the strokes,
they would make a lovely fence-but I mustn't. The strokes must be
'popindicular'.
'Meanwhile,' Scaramouch goes on, 'my mother became noticeably
addicted to acts of charity. What do I do? Seeing that this tendency was
adversely affecting my development I turned to my uncle Nikita Zuyev
of never-to-be-forgotten memory, and asked him to influence my
mother.'
This was the hundredth time I was hearing about that uncle of never-
to-be-forgotten memory, and I pictured a fat old man with the same
pimply face arriving in the village in a wide country sledge, taking off his
yellow sheepskin coat as he comes in, and crossing himself in front of
the icon. He beats the mother, while little Scaramouch stands by and
calmly watches his mother being beaten.
Strokes, strokes... But the fence is there already-done long ago, and
though I know very well what I am in for, I quickly draw the sun, some
birds and clouds above the fence. Scaramouch glances at me as he talks,
and I hastily cover up the sun and the birds with my sleeve. Too late! He
picks up my exercise book. His eyebrows go up. I stand up.
'Now just have a look, Aksinya Fyodorovna, what your dear little son
has been doing!'
And my mother, who had never beaten us children while Father was
alive, seizes my ear and bangs my head on the table.
My lessons came to an end the day that Scaramouch moved into our
house. The day before that there had been the wedding, which Aunt
Dasha, pleading illness, did not attend. I remember how smart Mother
looked at the wedding. She wore a jacket of white velvet, a gift from the
bridegroom, and had her hair done like a girl's, with braids wound
29
crosswise round her head. She talked and drank and smiled, but every
now and then she passed her hand across her face with a strange
expression. Scaramouch made a speech in which he drew attention to
the service he was rendering the poor family, which was 'definitely
heading for ruin inasmuch as its erstwhile breadwinner had left behind
him a scene of devastation', and mentioned, among other things, that
he had opened to me the door of 'general education', by which he
evidently meant those 'popindicular' strokes of his.
I don't think Mother heard the speech at all. She sat with lowered
head at her bridegroom's side, and then, with a sudden frown, stared in
front of her with a look of perplexity.
Skovorodnikov, who had been drinking heavily, went up to her and
slapped her on the shoulder.
'Ah, Aksinya, you've given a lark to catch a...'
She smiled weakly, hastily.
For about two months after the wedding my stepfather worked in the
wharf office, and though it was very painful to see him come in and
sprawl in the place where my father used to sit, and eat with his spoon
from his plate, life was bearable so long as I kept to myself, ran away
and did not return home until he was asleep. But shortly he was kicked
out of the office for some shady business, and then life became
unbearable. The unhappy idea of taking in hand our upbringing, my and
my sister's, entered that muddled head of his, and from then on I did
not have a moment to myself.
Looking back, I realise that he had been employed in his youth as a
servant. Obviously, he must have seen somewhere all those absurd and
queer things he was making me and my sister perform.
First of all, he demanded that we come and greet him in the morning,
though we slept on the floor within two paces of his bed. And we did so.
But no power on earth could force me to say: 'Good morning. Daddy!'
It wasn't a good morning, and he wasn't Daddy. We dare not sit down at
the table before him, and we had to ask permission to get up. We had to
