We were assigned to Kuskovo, eighty miles beyond Tomsk. At every station my sisters would beg food, while father filled our teakettle with hot water. Thus we got along till Tomsk was reached. Our grant of land was in the midst of the taiga, the virgin Siberian forest. There could be no thought of immediately settling on it, so my father remained in Tomsk, while the rest of us were sent on to Kuskovo. My sisters went to work for board and clothing. My mother, still strong and in good health, baked bread for a living, while I took care of the baby.
One day my mother was expecting visitors. She had baked some cakes and bought a pint of vodka, which she put on the shelf. While she was at work I tried to lull the baby to sleep. But baby was restless, crying incessantly. I did not know how to calm her. Then my eyes fell on the bottle of vodka.
“It must be a very good thing,” I thought, and decided to give a glass to baby. Before doing so I tasted it myself. It was bitter, but I somehow wanted more. I drank the first cup and, the bitterness having somewhat worn off, I drained another. In this manner I disposed of the entire bottle. Drowsy and weak, I took the baby into my arms and tried to rock it to sleep. But I myself began to stagger, and fell with the child to the floor.
Our mother found us there, screaming at the top of our voices. Presently the visitors arrived, and my mother reached for the bottle, only to discover that it had been emptied. It did not take her long to find the culprit. I shall always remember the whipping I got on that occasion.
Toward winter my father arrived from Tomsk. He brought little money with him. The winter was severe, and epidemics were raging in the country. We fell ill one by one, father, mother, then all the girls. As there was no bread in the house, and no money to buy anything, the community took care of us till the spring, housing and feeding us. By some miracle all of us escaped death, but our clothes had become rags. Our shoes fell to pieces. My parents decided to move to Tomsk, where we arrived barefoot and tattered, finding shelter at a poor inn on the outskirts of the town.
My father would work only a couple of days a week. He was lazy. The remainder of the week he idled away and drank. My sisters served as nursemaids, while my mother worked in a bakery, keeping the baby and me with her. We slept in the loft of a stable, with the horses stamping below us. Our bed was of straw laid on the floor, which consisted of unshaven planks thrown across logs. Soon the baker’s wife began to object to feeding an extra mouth, which belonged to me. I was then over eight years old.
“Why don’t you send her to work? She can earn her own bread,” she argued.
My mother would draw me to her breast, weep and beg for mercy. But the proprietress became impatient, threatening to throw us all out.
Finally my father came to see us, with the good tidings that he had found a place for me. I was to care for a five-year-old boy, in return for my board and eighty-five kopeks a month.
“If you do well,” my father added, “you will by and by receive a rouble.”
Such was the beginning of my career in life. I was eight and a half years old, small and very thin. I had never before left my mother’s side, and both of us wept bitterly at parting. It was a grey, painful, incomprehensible world into which I was being led by my father. My view of it was further blurred by a stream of tears.
I took care of the little boy for several days. One afternoon, while amusing him by making figures in the sand, I myself became so engrossed in the game that I quarrelled with my charge, which led to a fight. I remember feeling keenly that I was in the right. But the child’s mother did not inquire into the matter. She heard his screams and whipped me for it.
I was deeply hurt by the undeserved whipping administered by a strange woman.
“Where was my mother? Why did not she come to avenge me?”
My mother did not answer my cries. Nobody did. I felt miserable. How wrong was the world, how unjust. It was not worth while living in such a world.
My feet were bare. My dress was all in rags. Nobody seemed to care for me. I was all alone, without friends, and nobody knew of the yearning in my heart. I would drown myself, I thought. Yes, I would run to the river and drown myself. Then I would go up, free of all pain, into the arms of God.
I resolved to slip out at the first chance and jump into the river, but before the opportunity presented itself my father called. He found me in tears.
“What’s the matter, Manka?” he asked.
“I am going to drown myself, papa,” I answered sadly.
“Great Heavens! What’s happened, you foolish child?”
I then poured out my heart to him, begging to be taken to my mother. He caressed me and talked of my mother’s distress if I left my place. He promised to buy me a pair of shoes, and I remained.
But I did not stay long. The little boy, having seen his mother punish me, began to take advantage of
