thank him, though Mother still did the washing at the hospital, and my
sister cooked the dinner, which was bought with Mother's money and
mine. I remember the despair that seized me when poor Sanya rose
from the table and with the clumsy curtsy he had taught her, said for the
first time: 'Thank you, Daddy.' I felt like throwing my plate with the
unfinished porridge into that fat face! But I did not do it, and regret it to
this day.
CHAPTER TEN
AUNT DASHA
I would not, perhaps, be recalling this period of my life were it not for
the dear figure that rises before me—that of Aunt Dasha, whom, for the
first time, I then came consciously to appreciate and love.
I used to go to her and just sit there, saying nothing—she knew
everything as it was. To comfort me she used to tell me the story of her
life. At twenty-five she was already a widow. Her husband had been
30
killed at the very beginning of the Russo-Japanese War. I learnt with
surprise that she was not yet forty. I had thought her an old woman,
especially when she put on her spectacles of an evening and read to us
those letters which the flood-water had brought to our yard (she was
still reading them). She read one letter every evening. It had become for
her a sort of ritual. The ritual began with her trying to guess the
contents of a letter from its envelope and from the address, which in
most cases had been entirely washed away.
And then would come the reading, performed unhurriedly, with long
sighs and grumblings when any words were illegible. Aunt Dasha
rejoiced with the strangers in their joys and shared with them their
sorrows; some she scolded, others she praised. In short, these letters
might have been addressed to her personally, the way she took them.
She read books in just the same way. She dealt with the family and love
affairs of dukes and counts, heroes of the supplements to the Homeland
magazine, as though all those dukes and counts lived in the yard next
door.
'That Baron L., now,' she would say animatedly, 'I knew he would jilt
Madame de Sans-le-Sou. My love, my love-and then this! A fine fellow, I
must say!'
When, escaping from the presence of Scaramouch I spent the
evenings with her, she was already finishing her mail, with only some
fifteen letters left to read. Among them was one which I must quote
here. Aunt Dasha could not understand it, but it seemed to me, already
at that time, that it had some bearing on the letter of the navigating
officer.
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Here it is (the opening lines Aunt Dasha was unable to decipher):
'One thing I beg of you: do not trust that man! It can positively be
said that we owe all our misfortunes to him alone. Suffice it to say that
most of the sixty dogs he sold to us at Archangel had had to be shot
while we were still at Novaya Zemlya. That's the price we had to pay for
that good office. Not I alone, but the whole expedition send him our
curses. We were taking a chance, we knew that we were running a risk,
but we did not expect such a blow. It remains for us to do all we can.
There is so much I could tell you about our voyage! Stories enough to
last Katya a whole winter. But what a price we are having to pay, good
God! I don't want you to think that our plight is hopeless. Still, you
shouldn't look forward too much-'
Aunt Dasha read it hesitatingly, glancing at me over her spectacles
with a schoolteacherish expression. I did not realise, listening to her,
that within several years I would be making painful efforts to recall
every word of this letter.
The letter was a long one, on seven or eight sheets—giving a detailed
account of life on an icebound ship that was slowly drifting northwards.
I was particularly amused to find out that there was ice even in the
cabins and every morning it had to be hacked away with an axe.
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I could recount in my own words how sailor Skachkov, while hunting a
bear, had fallen to his death in a crevasse, or how everyone was worn
out looking after sick engineer Tisse. But the only words I remember
from the original were the few lines I have quoted here. Aunt Dasha
went on with her reading and sighing, and shifting scenes rose before
me as through a mist: white tents on white snow; panting dogs hauling
sledges; a huge man, a giant in fur boots and a tall fur cap striding
towards the sledges like a priest in a fur surplice.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A TALK WITH PYOTR
It was while hunched over my 'popindicular' strokes that the idea of
running away first occurred to me. I had not been drawing those birds
and clouds above the fence for nothing! Afterwards I forgot this idea.
But with each passing day I found it harder to return home.
I saw very little of my mother. She left the house while I was still
asleep. Sometimes, when I woke up in the night, I would see her at the
table. White as chalk from fatigue, she was eating slowly, and even
Scaramouch quailed a little when he met her dark scowling gaze.
I was very fond of my sister. Sometimes I wished I wasn't. I remember
that beast Scaramouch beating her cruelly because she had spilt a
wineglassful of vegetable oil. He sent her from the table, but I secretly
brought her some potatoes. She wept bitterly while she ate, then
suddenly reminded herself of the coloured glass beads which she feared
