«In my time these questions were decided very simply,» he thought. «Every boy caught smoking was flogged. The cowards and babies, therefore, gave up smoking, but the brave and cunning bore their floggings, carried the tobacco in their boots and smoked in the stable. When they were caught in the stable and again flogged, they smoked on the river-bank … and so on until they were grown up. My own mother in order to keep me from smoking used to give me money and sweets. Nowadays all these methods are regarded as petty or immoral. Taking logic as his standpoint, the modern teacher tries to inspire in the child good principles not out of fear, not out of wish for distinction or reward, but consciously.»
While he walked and talked, Serozha climbed on the chair next the table and began to draw. To prevent the destruction of business papers and the splashing of ink, his father had provided a packet of paper, cut especially for him, and a blue pencil. «To-day the cook was chopping cabbage and cut her finger,» he said, meantime sketching a house and twitching his eyebrows. «She cried so loud that we were all frightened and ran into the kitchen. Such a stupid! Natalya Semyonovna ordered her to bathe her finger in cold water, but she sucked it…. How could she put her dirty finger in her mouth! Papa, that is bad manners!»
He further told how during dinner-time an organ-grinder came into the yard with a little girl who sang and danced to his music.
«He has his own current of thoughts,» thought the Procuror. «In his head he has a world of his own, and he knows better than anyone else what is serious and what is not. To gain his attention and conscience it is no use imitating his language … what is wanted is to understand and reason also in his manner. He would understand me perfectly if I really disliked tobacco, if I were angry, or cried…. For that reason mothers are irreplaceable in bringing up children, for they alone can feel and cry and laugh like children…. With logic and morals nothing can be done. What shall I say to him?»
And Evgeniy Petrovich found it strange and absurd that he, an experienced jurist, half his life struggling with all kinds of interruptions, prejudices, and punishments, was absolutely at a loss for something to say to his son.
«Listen, give me your word of honour that you will not smoke!» he said.
«Word of honour!» drawled Serozha, pressing hard on his pencil and bending down to the sketch. «Word of honour!»
«But has he any idea what ‘word of honour’ means?» Buikovsky asked himself. «No, I am a bad teacher! If a schoolmaster or any of our lawyers were to see me now, he would call me a rag, and suspect me of super-subtlety…. But in school and in court all these stupid problems are decided much more simply than at home when you are dealing with those whom you love. Love is exacting and complicates the business. If this boy were not my son, but a pupil or a prisoner at the bar, I should not be such a coward and scatterbrains….»
Evgeniy Petrovich sat at the table and took up one of Serozha’s sketches. It depicted a house with a crooked roof, and smoke which, like lightning, zigzagged from the chimney to the edge of the paper; beside the house stood a soldier with dots for eyes, and a bayonet shaped like the figure four.
«A man cannot be taller than a house,» said the Procuror. «Look! the roof of your house only goes up to the soldier’s shoulder.»
Serozha climbed on his father’s knee, and wriggled for a long time before he felt comfortable. «No, papa,» he said, looking at the drawing. «If you drew the soldier smaller you wouldn’t be able to see his eyes.»
Was it necessary to argue? From daily observation the Procuror had become convinced that children, like savages, have their own artistic outlook, and their own requirements, inaccessible to the understanding of adults. Under close observation Serozha to an adult seemed abnormal. He found it possible and reasonable to draw men taller than houses, and to express with the pencil not only objects but also his own sentiments. Thus, the sound of an orchestra he drew as a round, smoky spot; whistling as a spiral thread…. According to his ideas, sounds were closely allied with forms and colour, and when painting letters he always coloured L yellow, M red, A black, and so on. Throwing away his sketch, Serozha again wriggled, settled himself more comfortably, and occupied himself with his father’s beard. First he carefully smoothed it down, then divided it in two, and arranged it to look like whiskers.
«Now you are like Iván Stepánovitch,» he muttered; «but wait, in a minute you will be like … like the porter. Papa, why do porters stand in doorways? Is it to keep out robbers?»
The Procurer felt on his face the child’s breath, touched with his cheek the child’s hair. In his heart rose a sudden feeling of warmth and softness, a softness that made it seem that not only his hands but all his soul lay upon the velvet of Serozha’s coat. He looked into the great, dark eyes of his child, and it seemed to him that out of their big pupils looked at him his mother, and his wife, and all whom he had ever loved.
«What is the good of thrashing him?» he asked. «Punishment is … and why turn myself into a schoolmaster?… Formerly men were simple; they thought less, and solved problems bravely…. Now, we think too much; logic has eaten us up…. The more cultivated a man, the more he thinks, the more he surrenders himself to subtleties, the less firm is his will, the greater his timidity in the face of affairs. And, indeed, if you look into it, what a lot of courage and faith in one’s self does it need to teach a child, to judge a criminal, to write a big book….»
The clock struck ten.
«Now, child, time for bed,» said the Procuror. «Say good night, and go.»
«No, papa,» frowned Serozha. «I may stay a little longer. Talk to me about something. Tell me a story.»
«I will, only after the story you must go straight to bed.»
Evgeniy Petrovich sometimes spent his free evenings telling Serozha stories. Like most men of affairs he could not repeat by heart a single verse or remember a single fairy tale; and every time was obliged to improvise. As a rule he began with the jingle, «Once upon a time, and a very good time it was,» and followed this up with all kinds of innocent nonsense, at the beginning having not the slightest idea of what would be the middle and the end. Scenery, characters, situations all came at hazard, and fable and moral flowed out by themselves without regard to the teller’s will Serozha dearly loved these improvisations, and the Procuror noticed that the simpler and less pretentious the plots, the more they affected the child.
«Listen,» he began, raising his eyes to the ceiling. «Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there lived an old, a very, very old tsar, with a long grey beard, and … this kind of moustaches. Well! He lived in a glass palace which shone and sparkled in the sun like a big lump of clean ice…. The palace … brother mine … the palace stood in a great garden where, you know, grew oranges … pears, cherry trees .,. and blossomed tulips, roses, water lilies … and birds of different colours sang…. Yes…. On the trees hung glass bells which, when the breeze blew, sounded so musically that it was a joy to listen. Glass gives out a softer and more tender sound than metal. … Well? Where was I? In the garden were fountains. … You remember you saw a fountain in the country, at Aunt Sonia’s. Just the same kind of fountains stood in the king’s garden, only they were much bigger, and the jets of water rose as high as the tops of the tallest poplars.»
Evgeniy Petrovich thought for a moment and continued:
«The old tsar had an only son, the heir to his throne—a little boy about your size. He was a good boy. He was never peevish, went to bed early, never touched anything on the table … and in all ways was a model. But he had one fault—he smoked.»
Serozha listened intently, and without blinking looked straight in his father’s eyes. The Procuror continued, and thought: «What next?» He hesitated for a moment, and ended his story thus:
«From too much smoking, the tsarevitch got ill with consumption, and died … when he was twenty years old. His sick and feeble old father was left without any help. There was no one to govern the kingdom and defend the palace. His enemies came and killed the old man, and destroyed the palace, and now in the garden are neither cherry trees nor birds nor bells…. So it was, brother.»
The end of the plot seemed to Evgeniy Petrovich naive and ridiculous. But on Serozha the whole story produced a strong impression. Again his eyes took on an expression of sorrow and something like fright; he looked thoughtfully at the dark window, shuddered, and said in a weak voice:
«I will not smoke any more.»
«They will tell me that this parable acted by means of beauty and artistic form,» he speculated. «That may be so, but that is
