Читать книгу The White Terror and The Red - Abraham Cahan - Страница 8

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A LESSON in Latin was in progress. The teacher was a blond Czech. Pavel looked at him intently, trying to follow the exercises, but he only became the more aware of the foreigner’s struggles with Russian and made the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he walked up and down the room, was suggestive of a peasant woman trying to catch a chicken. His thoughts passed to Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question flashed into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why, then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead of being cut off from the living world, instead of being thrown into a dungeon to waste and perish, as was done with all fellows of that sort, he was merely transferred to another school?

The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book under his arm and left the room. Most of the pupils went out soon after. The two long corridors were bubbling with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated buttons and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience with the lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing the one soon to be recited. Pievakin passed along. The pupils bowed to him with curious sympathetic looks, and he returned their salutes with an air of mixed timidity and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics emerged from one of the glass doors, his deformity bulging through the blue broadcloth of his uniform.

“Alexandre Alexandrovich!” he shouted demonstratively, and catching up with him he threw his arm around his waist.

Pavel, who had been watching the scene, was about to return to his class-room so as to avoid bowing to Pievakin, when, by a sudden impulse, he saluted the two teachers, and advancing to meet them, with that peculiar air of politeness which reminded his classmates of his equipage and the colonnade in front of his mother’s mansion, he accosted the instructor of history and geography, turning pale as he did so:

“May I speak to you, Alexandre Alexandrovich?” When the mathematician had withdrawn, he inquired in a tone of pain and concern: “What has happened, Alexandre Alexandrovich?”

“Oh, I’m in trouble, prince,” the old man faltered. He had never addressed the youth by his title before, and there was a note of abject supplication in his voice, as if the boy could help him. His face had a pinched, cowed look.

“But, Alexandre Alexandrovich, it’s a terrible thing they are accusing you of. You’ve been so dear to me, Alexandre Alexandrovich. I want to know all. I cannot rest, Alexandre Alexandrovich.”

“The story is easily told. A misfortune has befallen me. While touching upon the constitutional form of government, I was somewhat carried away. That I don’t deny. I know it was wrong of me, but I assure you, prince, I meant no harm.”

It sounded as though he were a pleading pupil and the boy before him his teacher.

Pavel was touched and perplexed.

“But that’s in the text-book, Alexandre Alexandrovich.”

“To be sure it is. Only the text-book merely uses the term without explaining it, while I, absent-mindedly, proceeded to do so, which is against the rules, and, as ill luck would have it, I warmed up a bit. When I was first asked about it I was not aware of having done any wrong. I was so shocked, in fact, I lost my temper. That was the worst of it. I am a ruined man, prince. Thirty-six years have I served the Czar and there is not a blemish on my record.”

“But why should you call yourself a ruined man, Alexandre Alexandrovich,” Pavel said impetuously. “I don’t see why it should be too late to straighten it all out. I’m going to see my uncle. Or, better still, my mother will see him. We can’t let it go that way. We should all be a lot of scoundrels if we did. I’m going to tell him so.”

“Do it, prince, if you can,” the old man said with shamefaced eagerness. “I shall never forget it.”

When Pavel came home he found his mother’s sleigh in front of the main entrance, her coachman in dazzling attire, waiting with pompous stolidity. When the liveried porter threw the door open to him and he entered the vestibule he saw coming down the immense staircase his mother and his five-year-old half-brother, Kostia, dressed for their afternoon drive, Anna Nicolayevna in her furs and the little fellow in the costume of a Caucasian horseman, which became his grave little face charmingly. Following at some distance, with a smile of admiration, half servile, half sincere, on her fresh German face, was Kostia’s governess. She was not dressed for a drive. She was merely going to see her charge off.

“Mother, I am afraid I shall have to detain you,” Pavel said, solemnly. “I wish to speak to you about Alexandre Alexandrovich.”

“Won’t it keep?” she asked, with a facetious gesture.

“Don’t make fun of it, mother,” he reproached her. “It’s a serious matter. My head is in a whirl.”

Kostia was burning to show himself in public in his new Circassian cap and when he saw his mother yield he screwed up his face for a cry, but he forthwith straightened it out again. He scarcely ever cried in Pavel’s presence for fear of being called “damsel” by him—an appellation he dreaded more than being locked up alone in the schoolroom.

They went into Anna Nicolayevna’s favorite sitting-room, a square chamber furnished and decorated in tan, in no particular style, but with an eye to the combined suggestions of old-time solidity and latter-day elegance. It was the embodiment of rest and silence, an effect to which two life-sized bronze statues—a Diana and a Venus de Medici—and the drowsy ticking of an ancient clock contributed not a little. It was known as the English room because its former furnishings had been modelled after London standards.

Pavel painted Pievakin as a penitent, broken spirit till Anna Nicolayevna’s eyes grew red.

“Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?” she asked.

“Dangerous nothing! It’s all nonsense. He’s more loyal than Novikoff anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising nincompoop, while he is the kindliest, most conscientious, most soulful man in the world.”

“Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty,” she said, sadly. “This is a very queer world, Pasha. It’s just like those wretches who would do away with czars to be warm-hearted and good to everybody. They don’t believe there ought to be rich and poor, either. When you come across a man of this sort keep away from him, Pasha.”

“But what has that got to do with Pievakin?” he shouted. “The very sight of a Nihilist would be enough to frighten him out of his wits. I want you to tell it all to uncle, mamman. Give him no peace until he promises you to write to the curator about the poor old man.”

The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin of Pavel’s deceased father; but he was also related to the young man by marriage to his mother’s sister, who had died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna promised to see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would not wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness, tapping the thick rug with his foot and shaking all over as he spoke, until she agreed to go at once.

While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball room and played “hunter and partridge,” a game of the gymnasium boys’ inventing. They had not been many minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the errand on which he had despatched his mother and the vast ball room echoed with his voluminous laughter. His great pleasure was to tease Kostia until the little boy’s mouth would begin to twitch, and then to shake his finger at him and say: “Better not cry, Kostia, or you know what I am going to call you.” Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar of merriment.

Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that Pievakin deserved mercy, he made up his mind to see his uncle himself, and he did so the very next morning.

Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old satrap, shrewd, tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual for a man of his class, with an eye to business. His nose was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair was elaborately dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as tipping was in its leading café. One could not turn round without showing “gratitude.” The wheels of government would not move in the desired direction unless they were greased, the price of this “grease” or “gratitude” varying all the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen thousand rubles. Governor Boulatoff, who had come to Miroslav a ruined man, was now the largest land-owner in the province. Whenever he was in need of ready cash he would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece of anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the other officials as “pressing the spring”—the spring of the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the invariable effect of the proceeding being the appearance of a delegation with a snug piece of Jewish “gratitude.” He was continually sneering at the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving for recognition; yet so comfortable did he feel in this city of gardens, card-playing and “gratitude,” from which “the Czar was too far off and God too high up,” that he was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted should come in the form of a transfer to a more important province.

Pavel found him in his imposing “den.” The old potentate was in his morning gown, freshly bathed, shaved and coiffured and smelling of pomade and cigarette smoke.

“Well, my little statesman,” he greeted him in French. “What brings you so early this morning? Aren’t you going to school at all?” He called him statesman because of his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his diplomatic grandfather.

“I shall stay away from the first three lessons,” Pavel answered. “I cannot rest, uncle. I want to speak to you about that unfortunate man.”

The governor was very fond of Pavel, but he persisted in treating him as a boy, and the only serious talk young Boulatoff got out of him regarding Pievakin was an exhortation to give “men of that sort a wide berth.”

“But, uncle——”

“Don’t argue,” the governor interrupted him, blinking as he spoke. “This is not the kind of thing for a boy of your station to get mixed up in.”

“Oh, it’s enough to drive one crazy. The poor man is sincerely repentant, uncle. He’ll never do it again, uncle.”

“I see you’re quite excited over it. Just the kind of effect fellows of that stamp will have on the mind of a boy. This is just where the danger comes in. Don’t forget your name, Pasha. Come, throw it all out of your clever little head. There’s a good boy.”

“Uncle darling, he’ll never do it again. Let him stay where he is.”

“You’re a foolish boy. Whether he’ll do it again or no, his very presence in this town would be a source of danger. Whoever sets his eyes on him will say to himself: ‘Here is the man who once talked of the way people live under a constitution.’ So you see he’ll be a reminder of unlawful ideas. We have no use for fellows of this sort. They are like living poison. Do you see the point? Let your teacher thank his stars the case was not put in the hands of the gendarmes entirely, or he would be sent to a colder place.”

All this the governor said in the playful manner of one conversing with a child and, by way of clinching the matter, he explained that he had nothing to do with the case and that it was under the jurisdiction of the “curator of educational district.”

Pavel was in despair and his being treated as a boy threw him into a rage, but he held himself in check for Pievakin’s sake.

“Oh, the curator will do anything you ask of him, uncle,” he said in a tone of entreaty and resentment at once.

“You don’t want your uncle to write letters begging for a fellow who was foolish enough to get mixed up in such an affair as that, do you? I used to think you really cared for your uncle.”

Pavel contracted his forehead and put out his chin sullenly.