Читать книгу Against the Current: Simple Chapters from a Complex Life - Edward Alfred Steiner - Страница 5

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THE servants called me “Uri.” When they petted me or wanted some favour, they called me “Urinku,” and when they were angry, which was not seldom, they cried, “Uri!” giving the i a short, sharp sound. This made me very angry, for at best I did not like the name, which wasn’t my name anyway.

When I asked my nurse why she insisted upon using it, she said, “Because it means awake, and you have kept us awake ever since you were born.” Then I hated the name still more.

One day—I think I was not yet four—I was brought to judgment before my mother for having scratched and beaten a young servant girl because she had called me by that hated nickname. My mother never could punish me, for whenever I offended, which was often, I threw my arms around her and kissed her, and the rising anger quickly vanished. Unconsciously this grew to be a trick which I knew would save me and I practiced it on this occasion. As I held my arms around my mother’s neck and pressed kisses upon her responsive lips, she said, “I will tell you why the servants call you Uri, if you promise that you will not grow angry if they call you by that name.”

Then she told me in that sweet, low voice which never had a harsh note, and which I shall never hear again in this world: “Before you were born, the sky was red at night for months; a comet, which is a star with a long tail, travelled through the heavens, and the peasants were so frightened that they did not leave their isbas at night, and the inns were silent and deserted. The witch”—and here I began to shudder; for she was still living and had frightened me many a time—“the witch went about through the street, crying: ‘There will be war! There will be war!’ ” In the Slavic language the word for war is strangely euphonious—Voyna.

“Bude Voyna! Bude Voyna!” And mother imitated the voice of the witch so that I shook from fear; for war held unknown terrors and the sight of a gun always threw me into a panic. To this day I feel something of childhood’s dread at sight of a gun or pistol.

“It wasn’t long before soldiers came,” mother continued—“and they blew the trumpet at the town hall and all the able-bodied men had to go to be examined. I wept day and night because your father was young and strong and the trumpet called him away from me and from four little children and from you who were not yet born.

“Many people who had money buried it in the garden or hid it in their bake-ovens and much of it was lost or destroyed; for numbers of the men were killed and when their wives started fires in the bake-ovens, the money went up the chimneys in smoke.

“ ‘Just let them come!’ your father said, ‘just let those Prussians come, and we will wring their necks like chickens!’

“No, your father did not have to go away to war, the war came to us. One night the sky looked as if it were burning up and the stars were like fiery coals. A haze hung around them as if each star had a halo. The witch ran through the street as if possessed, crying: ‘Bude Voyna! Bude Voyna!’ and before morning, the battle came nearer and nearer to us. Bullets flew through the window-panes and the peasants’ straw-thatched isbas were set on fire. It was a terrible day and a frightful night.

“Your father was with the wounded and the dying and he came home in the gray morning with his hands and his garments covered with blood. The next day the war was over. The soldiers were gone and the Prussians were the victors.

“Then again the witch ran through the street, crying: ‘There will be sickness! There will be sickness!’ and evil smells rose from the ground and men were smitten by the cholera. Your father went out again to care for the sick and the dying; one evening when he came home he himself was a victim of the disease and in the morning he was dead.

“When autumn came the cholera was over and again the witch went through the street crying: ‘There will be famine! There will be famine!’ The poor had no bread. The little flour which the king sent them, they mixed with bran or ground roots or even sawdust. To this day the peasants count time as so many years before the famine or after it. A hard winter it was for every one. We lived in constant dread; for robber bands were passing through the town at night and many Jewish homes were broken into and plundered.

“One morning, just as the beadle was going from house to house, waking the people to go to the synagogue—striking the door with a hammer and crying: ‘Uri, Uri!’ ‘Awake, Awake!’—just as he came to our door, you were born, and ever since you have been called Uri. Of course you received another name, the name of your sainted father, but Uri seems to cling to you. Remember that when I see you, you awaken much sorrow and much joy. When the servants call you Uri, you must not be angry with them.”

I remember the story almost word for word, as mother told it to me; for it was the time when my little brain began to retain impressions, and, moreover, mother insisted upon my apologizing to the servant girl whom I had scratched and beaten, and an apology was not to my liking.

After that a certain kind of sadness crept over me which I could never quite shake off. An intense fear of guns gripped me. I remember this well, for the next day an Hungarian shepherd came into the kitchen and brought his old blunderbuss with him. Old Istvan had fierce moustaches and coal black eyes; he wore strange trousers which looked like divided skirts, and a sheepskin coat with the head of the sheep hanging over his shoulder; but I know it was the gun that I most dreaded, for I cried and shook from fear until Istvan carried it out of the house.

I never forgot what my mother told me about my name, and I did not grow angry again at the servants for calling me Uri. Even now there is a hut in the Carpathians where one of our servants of that period lives. When last I went to see her and told her who I was, a smile spread over her care-worn face and she said as she drew me close to her, “Muy Urinku.” She was the girl I beat and scratched, and as she recalled that incident, she said, “Alle bilie ste hundsut”—“But you were a little rascal.”