‘Mamma! Mamma! How lovely it is here, mamma!’ cries the boy; and he kisses the children again and wants at once to tell them about the puppets behind the glass. ‘Who are you, boys and girls?’ he asks, laughing and feeling that he loves them all.
‘This is Christ’s Christmas party,’ they answer. ‘On this day Christ always has a Christmas party for those little children who have no Christmas tree of their own . . .’ And he learned that all these boys and girls were children just like him, but some had frozen to death in the baskets in which they had been abandoned on the doorsteps of Petersburg officials, others had perished in the keeping of indifferent nurses in orphans’ homes, still others had died at the dried-up breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, and yet others had suffocated from the fumes in third-class railway carriages. And now they are all here, all like angels, all with Christ; and He is in their midst, stretching out His hands to them, blessing them and their sinful mothers. And the mothers of the children stand apart, weeping; each one recognizes her son or daughter; and the children fly to their mothers and wipe away their tears with their tiny hands, begging them not to weep because they are so happy here . . .
Down below, the next morning, the porters found the tiny body of the runaway boy who had frozen to death behind the woodpile; they found his mother as well . . . She had died even before him; they met in God’s Heaven.
So why did I make up a story like that, so little in keeping with the usual spirit of a sober-minded diary, and a writer’s diary at that? All the more since I promised stories preeminently about actual events! But that’s just the point: I keep imagining that all this could really have happened – I mean the things that happened in the cellar and behind the woodpile; as for Christ’s Christmas party – well, I really don’t know what to say: could that have happened? That’s just why I’m a novelist – to invent things.
The Peasant Marey
(February 1876)
But reading all these professions de foi1 is a bore, I think, and so I’ll tell you a story; actually, it’s not even a story, but only a reminiscence of something that happened long ago and that, for some reason, I would very much like to recount here and now, as a conclusion to our treatise on the People. At the time I was only nine years old. But no, I’d best begin with the time I was twenty-nine.
It was the second day of Easter Week. The air was warm, the sky was blue, the sun was high, warm, and bright, but there was only gloom in my heart. I was wandering behind the prison bar-racks, examining and counting off the pales in the sturdy prison stockade, but I had lost even the desire to count, although such was my habit. It was the second day of ‘marking the holiday’ within the prison compound; the prisoners were not taken out to work; many were drunk; there were shouts of abuse, and quarrels were constantly breaking out in all corners. Disgraceful, hideous songs; card games in little nooks under the bunks; a few convicts, already beaten half to death by sentence of their comrades for their particular rowdiness, lay on bunks covered with sheepskin coats until such time as they might come to their senses; knives had already been drawn a few times – all this, in two days of holiday, had worn me out to the point of illness.
Indeed, I never could endure the drunken carousals of peasants without being disgusted, and here, in this place, particularly. During these days even the prison staff did not look in; they made no searches, nor did they check for alcohol, for they realized that once a year they had to allow even these outcasts to have a spree; otherwise it might be even worse. At last, anger welled up in my heart. I ran across the Pole M—cki, a political prisoner; he gave me a gloomy look, his eyes glittering and his lips trembling: ‘Je hais ces brigands!’ 2 he muttered, gritting his teeth, and passed me by.
I returned to the barrack despite the fact that a quarter-hour before I had fled it half-demented when six healthy peasants had thrown themselves, as one man, on the drunken Tatar Gazin and had begun beating him to make him settle down; they beat him senselessly with such blows as might have killed a camel; but they knew that it was not easy to kill this Hercules and so they didn’t hold back. And now when I returned to the barracks I noticed Gazin lying senseless on a bunk in the corner showing scarcely any signs of life; he was lying under a sheepskin coat, and everyone passed him by in silence: although they firmly hoped he would revive the next morning, still, ‘with a beating like that, God forbid, you could finish a man off.’ I made my way to my bunk opposite a window with an iron grating and lay down on my back, my hands behind my head, and closed my eyes. I liked to lie like that: a sleeping man was left alone, while at the same time one could daydream and think.
But dreams did not come to me; my heart beat restlessly, and M—cki’s words kept echoing in my ears: ‘Je hais ces brigands!’ However, why describe my feelings? Even now at night I sometimes dream of that time, and none of my dreams are more agonizing. Perhaps you will also notice that until today I have scarcely ever spoken in print of my prison life; I wrote Notes from the House of the Dead fifteen years ago using an invented narrator, a criminal who supposedly had murdered his wife. (I might add, by the way, that many people supposed and are even now quite firmly convinced that I was sent to hard labor for the murder of my wife.)
Little by little I lost myself in reverie and imperceptibly sank into memories of the past. All through my four years in prison I continually thought of all my past days, and I think I relived the whole of my former life in my memories. These memories arose in my mind of themselves; rarely did I summon them up consciously. They would begin from a certain point, some little thing that was often barely perceptible, and then bit by bit they would grow into a finished picture, some strong and complete impression.
I would analyse these impressions, adding new touches to things experienced long ago; and the main thing was that I would refine them, continually refine them, and in this consisted my entire entertainment. This time, for some reason, I suddenly recalled a moment of no apparent significance from my early childhood when I was only nine years old, a moment that I thought I had completely forgotten; but at that time I was particularly fond of memories of my very early childhood.
I recalled one August at our home in the country: the day was clear and dry, but a bit chilly and windy; summer was on the wane, and soon I would have to go back to Moscow to spend the whole winter in boredom over my French lessons; and I was so sorry to have to leave the country. I passed by the granaries, made my way down into the gully, and climbed up into the Dell – that was what we called a thick patch of bushes that stretched from the far side of the gully to a grove of trees. And so I make my way deeper into the bushes and can hear that some thirty paces away a solitary peasant is plowing in the clearing.
I know he’s plowing up the steep side of a hill and his horse finds it heavy going; from time to time I hear his shout, ‘Gee-up!’ I know almost all our peasants, but don’t recognize the one who’s plowing; and what difference does it make, anyway, since I’m quite absorbed in my own business. I also have an occupation: I’m breaking off a switch of walnut to lash frogs; walnut switches are so lovely and quite without flaws, so much better than birch ones. I’m also busy with bugs and beetles, collecting them; some are very pretty; I love the small, nimble, red-and-yellow lizards with the little black spots as well, but I’m afraid of snakes. I come across snakes far less often than lizards, however.
There aren’t many mushrooms here; you have to go into the birch wood for mushrooms, and that’s what I have in mind. I liked nothing better than the forest with its mushrooms and wild berries, its insects, and its birds,
