“Never mind, darling, I just thought in my simplicity, ‘Maybe they feed them poorly in that school.’ Don’t hold it against me, dearest.”
“And Antonina Vassilievna” (Touchard’s wife) “will be offended. My comrades will also laugh at me . . .”
“Don’t you want to take them, maybe you’ll eat them?”
“Leave them, if you like, ma’am . . .”
I didn’t even touch the treats; the oranges and gingerbreads lay in front of me on the little table, and I sat looking down, but with a great air of personal dignity. Who knows, maybe I also wanted very much not to conceal from her that her visit even shamed me in the eyes of my comrades; to show it to her at least a little, so that she’d understand: “You see, you shame me and don’t even understand it yourself.” Oh, I was already running after Touchard with a brush then, whisking specks of dust off him! I also pictured how much mockery I’d have to endure from the boys as soon as she left, and maybe from Touchard himself—and there was not the slightest kind feeling for her in my heart. I only looked out of the corner of my eye at her dark old dress, her rather coarse, almost working-woman’s hands, her completely coarse shoes, and her very thin face; little wrinkles already ran across her forehead, though Antonina Vassilievna told me later in the evening, when she had left: “Your maman must have been very good-looking once.”
We were sitting like that, and suddenly Agafya came in with a cup of coffee on a tray. It was after dinner, and the Touchards always had coffee in their living room at that time. But mama thanked her and did not take the cup: as I learned later, she didn’t drink coffee at all then, because it gave her heart palpitations. The thing was that to themselves the Touchards probably considered her visit and the permission for her to see me an extraordinary indulgence on their part, so that the cup of coffee they sent to mama was, so to say, a deed of humaneness, comparatively speaking, which did extraordinary credit to their civilized feelings and European notions. And, as if on purpose, mama refused it.
I was summoned to Touchard, and he told me to take all my books and notebooks to show mama: “So that she can see how much you’ve managed to acquire in my institution.” Here Antonina Vassilievna, pursing her lips, said to me for her part, touchily and mockingly, through her teeth:
“It seems your maman didn’t like our coffee.”
I gathered a pile of notebooks and carried them to my waiting mama, past the “princely and senatorial children,” who were crowding in the classroom and spying on mama and me. And I even liked fulfilling Touchard’s order with literal precision. I methodically began to open my notebooks and explain, “This is a lesson in French grammar, this is an exercise from dictation, here is the conjugation of the auxiliary verbs avoir and être , here’s something from geography, a description of the major cities of Europe and all parts of the world,” and so on, and so forth. For half an hour or more I went on explaining in an even little voice, looking down like a well-behaved boy. I knew that mama understood nothing in my studies, maybe couldn’t even write, but it was here that my role pleased me. But I couldn’t weary her—she went on listening without interrupting me, with extraordinary attention and even awe, so that I myself finally became bored and stopped; her look was sad, however, and there was something pitiful in her face.
She finally got up to leave. Suddenly Touchard himself came in and, with a foolishly important air, asked her: “Was she pleased with her son’s progress?” Mama began murmuring and thanking him incoherently; Antonina Vassilievna came in, too. Mama started asking them both “not to abandon the little orphan, he’s the same as an orphan now, be his benefactors . . .” and with tears in her eyes she bowed to them both, each separately, with a deep bow, precisely as “simple folk” bow when they come to ask important people about something. The Touchards weren’t even expecting that, and Antonina Vassilievna was visibly softened and, of course, at once changed her conclusion about the cup of coffee. Touchard, with increased importance, replied humanely that he “made no distinction among the children, that here they were all his children, and he their father, and that he held me on almost the same footing with princely and senatorial children, and that that should be appreciated,” and so on, and so forth. Mama only kept bowing, but with embarrassment, finally turned to me, and with tears glistening in her eyes, said, “Good-bye, darling!”
And she kissed me—that is, I allowed myself to be kissed. She obviously would have liked to kiss me again and again, to embrace me, to hug me, but whether she was ashamed to do it in front of people, or was bitter about something else, or realized that I was ashamed of her, in any case, having bowed once more to the Touchards, she hastily started for the door. I just stood there.
“Mais suivez donc votre mère,” said Antonina Vassilievna. “Il n’a pas de coeur cet enfant!”50
Touchard shrugged his shoulders in reply, which, of course, signified: “It’s not for nothing I treat him as a lackey.”
I obediently followed mama downstairs; we went out to the porch. I knew they were now all watching from the window. Mama turned to the church and crossed herself deeply three times before it, her lips twitched, the bell tolled densely and measuredly from the belfry. She turned to me and—couldn’t help herself, she laid both hands on my head and wept over it.
“Mama, come on . . . it’s shameful . . . they can see me from the window . . .”
She roused herself and began to hurry:
“Well, the Lord . . . well, the Lord be with you . . . the angels in heaven, the most-pure Mother, Saint Nicholas protect you . . . Lord, Lord!” she repeated in a quick patter, crossing me all the while, trying quickly to make as many crosses as possible, “my darling, my dear. But wait, darling . . .”
She hurriedly put her hand in her pocket and took out a handkerchief, a blue checked handkerchief tightly knotted at the corner, and began to untie the knot . . . but it wouldn’t come untied . . .
“Well, it makes no difference, take it with the handkerchief, it’s clean, maybe you can use it, there are maybe four twenty-kopeck pieces in it, maybe you’ll need it, forgive me, darling, it’s all I have . . . forgive me, darling.”
I accepted the handkerchief, was about to observe that we “were very well kept here by Mr. Touchard and Antonina Vassilievna, and that we didn’t need anything,” but I restrained myself and took the handkerchief.
Once more she crossed me, once more she whispered some prayer, and suddenly—and suddenly she bowed to me, too, just as she had to the Touchards upstairs—a deep, long, slow bow—I’ll never forget it! I just shuddered, and didn’t know why myself. What did she mean to say by this bow: that she “acknowledged her guilt before me,” as I once thought up long afterwards? I don’t know. But then I at once felt still more ashamed, because “they were watching from up there, and Lambert might even start beating me.” She finally left. The princely and senatorial children had eaten the oranges and gingerbreads before I came back, and Lambert took the four twenty-kopeck pieces from me at once; they bought pastry and chocolate with them in a pastry shop and didn’t even offer me any.
A whole half-year went by, and a windy and foul October came. I completely forgot about mama. Oh, by then hatred, a dull hatred for everything, had already penetrated my heart, saturating it completely; though I brushed Touchard off as before, I already hated him with all my might, and more and more every day. And it was then, once in the sad evening twilight, that I began rummaging in my little drawer for some reason, and suddenly saw her blue cambric handkerchief in the corner. It had lain like that ever since I stuffed it there then. I took it out and looked it over even with a certain curiosity; the end of the handkerchief still kept traces of the former knot and even
