Читать книгу Behind the Curtain - Philip Gibbs - Страница 7

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For a time during the war between the Whites and Reds Denikin’s army thrust very near to Moscow. Vladimir’s mother found rest and shelter for a time in a village named Zaratov, a hundred miles or so south of that old city which she had tried to reach. It was like thousands of other Russian villages, with wooden houses built inside a stockade, and a white wooden church with a pear-shaped dome of copper. Here, before the communal farm system had been enforced, most of the men were peasant farmers with strips of land beyond the village, and a cow or two which in winter-time they put into sheds next to their houses with the pigs and poultry. The church was used as a storehouse, and the priest had been killed in the first days of the Revolution. The man who killed him by strangulation was the local Kommissar who was proud of this deed and made no secret of it. His name was Igor Ivanovich and he was a petty tyrant in the village, carrying out orders from the Commune who received their own orders direct from Moscow. He was a heavily built, black-bearded man who had formerly been the village blacksmith but was now a State Official. He kept his eye on all the small farmers whom he called kulaks, meaning “fists,” or graspers, and bullied them with dark threats of the Cheka if they failed to deliver the right quantity of produce levied for the use of the Red Army under Trotsky.

He kept his eye also on the village school, insisting upon the intensive teaching of Communist principles—the pure Gospel of Lenin and Karl Marx—by an elderly schoolmistress and a young master in charge of the boys. Their task was not easy as there was no fuel to heat the school-house, no books, paper or blackboards for the instruction of young minds, and a scarce attendance of youth who stayed away during winter months for lack of boots and shoes.

Vladimir and his mother were lodgers in the schoolmaster’s house. This young man, Dmitri, was a hunchback who lived with his mother. He had black hair which fell over his forehead and a pale clean-shaven face. He was nothing but skin and bones, and Vladimir remembered in after years his long thin arms and bony wrists sticking out of a ragged jacket with sleeves too short for him. Although he was only a village schoolmaster he was an earnest student, and during the long winter evenings was always reading a book by the light of a kerosene-lamp which made the room smell of oil. But sometimes his eyes left the printed words and rested on the face of Lucy who was on the other side of the table reading a tattered old book of her own—Vanity Fair or The Mill on the Floss or Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales which she used to read out to her small son. These English books and three or four others were her greatest treasures which she had saved through all the dangers and hardships of the Civil War, packed up with a few other belongings, mostly clothes, and taken with her on farm carts when they had been wanderers and fugitives. Vladimir remembered the look of them, the faded colour of their tattered covers, and some of the pictures in them, especially those of Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. In this house of Dmitri the hunchbacked schoolmaster Vladimir slept over the stove with his mother and Olga. Outside in winter the snow lay thick and hard, glistening like crushed diamonds under the moonlight, as the boy could see through a little window just opposite the stove. But in the room it was warm and foggy with that smell of the lamp. Sometimes he lay awake before his mother came to bed, and from his high place he looked down on the figures in the room and watched them. Dmitri’s mother was there, a woman like an old witch, he thought, though perhaps she was not really so old as he thought afterwards. But there were silver threads in her hair and little wrinkles round her eyes and mouth and some of her teeth had gone as he could see when she smiled at him. Sometimes his mother laughed over one of her English books or would look up at him and say, “Go to sleep, you monkey!” The small boy watching her thought she was beautiful. That thought came to him as a kind of surprise one night. “Mother is beautiful,” he thought, “but not in a Russian way. She is very English of course. She has a fair skin with the colour of rose-petals in her cheeks, and she has little waves in her hair. Dmitri thinks her beautiful. Perhaps that is why he looks up from his book so often to stare at her. He looks queer down there with his hunchback making a funny shadow on the wall, and his black hair falling over his eyes.”

He was kind to Vladimir and taught him Russian poetry and told him some of the old Russian fairy-tales quite different from the English, and drew pictures of Russian heroes in the old days before the Revolution. With his long bony fingers he could draw wonderfully and make things come alive. But these pictures and Lucy’s English books were the cause of trouble one night—an exciting night—which the small boy never forgot though he could not remember a lot of other things.

He was lying awake up there on the stove when he heard footsteps coming over the hard snow outside, crunch, crunch, crunch. The other people in the room heard them. He saw his mother raise her head and listen. He saw Dmitri half rise from his chair so that the shadow of his humpback shifted on the whitewashed wall. Dmitri’s mother put down some needlework and asked in a frightened voice, “Who is that?”

There was a heavy clout at the door which was locked. Dmitri went across the room and called out in a thin high-pitched voice, “Who is there?” From outside in the snow came a harsh answer.

“It is Igor Ivanovich. Open the door.”

Dmitri turned the key in the lock, and his hand was shaking so that the key rattled. Cold air rushed in as the door opened and Vladimir sneezed up there on the stove where he sat up with a sense of excitement.

The tall black-bearded man strode into the room beating powdered snow from his chest. There was a crown of snow on his fur cap which he did not take off.

“Good evening, Igor Ivanovich,” said Dmitri’s mother in a soft voice. “You will take a cup of tea with us?”

Igor stared round at the three people in the room—Dmitri, Dmitri’s mother, and Lucy. His black eyes turned upwards to where young Vladimir was sitting up on the stove. Little Olga was just a sleeping bundle up there.

“I haven’t come for a cup of tea,” he answered roughly. “I have come to ask some questions of Dmitri Mihaelovich, who has been entrusted with the education of Russian youth in this village and is therefore an important servant of the State which relies upon his loyalty to the Revolution and the orders of Lenin to whom we owe everything.”

“My son is a faithful servant of the Revolution,” said Dmitri’s mother. “Take a chair, Igor Ivanovich. My son will answer all your questions with pleasure. He has nothing to fear.”

“Let him speak for himself, old mother!” answered Ivanovich harshly. “He has a tongue in his head, I suppose.”

Dmitri had a tongue in his head but seemed unable to use it. All colour had left his face and his lips seemed dry until he moistened them with his tongue.

Ivanovich sat down on one of the chairs and took off his fur cap on which the snow was melting.

“I have bad reports of you,” he said to Dmitri. “I have come here to warn you. Hunchback though you are, there will be no mercy from me if you continue to teach bourjoi filth to the boys of this village. I am Kommissar here. I am responsible for the morality and loyalty of this community. I do my duty as a son of the Revolution. I wish you to do yours.”

“You have certain complaints?” asked Dmitri in a frightened voice.

“I have, Dmitri Mihaelovich. Very serious complaints. Instead of teaching the boys to read and write you have been telling them stories which they repeat at home. They are not good stories, Dmitri Mihaelovich.”

Dmitri moistened his lips again.

“There is no paper in the school,” he said. “There is no blackboard. It is difficult to teach the boys reading and writing without paper, though I do my best. Now and again I tell them stories to awaken their interest and teach them a little history.”

“It’s bad history,” said Igor Ivanovich, once the blacksmith of the village, but able to read and write, having been taught by Dmitri’s mother in the days before the Revolution.

“You have been telling them about the times of Imperial Russia. You’ve been telling them fairy-tales which are a pack of lies and bourjoi ideology. You’ve been telling them about princes and princesses and magic carpets and treasures of gold and silver and precious stones. All that is contrary to the teachings of Karl Marx and the doctrine of Lenin. It is against the orders I have received from Moscow. The Red Army isn’t fighting for princes and princesses. The Cheka knows how to deal with them. What have you to say, Dmitri Mihaelovich?”

“They are old Russian folk-stories,” said Dmitri. “They seemed to me harmless. The fairy princes and princesses exist only in the realm of imagination.”

“Imagination is poisoned by them!” answered Ivanovich harshly. “I heard them in my own childhood. They were a deadly menace to my mind. I strangled them like once I strangled the priest of this village. So I will kill all superstition and bourjoi influence on the mind of Russian youth.”

There was further talk. It went on and on as though for ever. Young Vladimir, sitting up on his bed above the stove, grew tired of it, but suddenly something else happened.

Igor Ivanovich’s black eyes had roved towards the book which Lucy had been reading—Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. His big hairy hand grabbed it and he turned over the pages and looked at the pictures. They were pictures of fairy princes and princesses and other characters of fairyland.

He gave several grunts of horror and disgust.

“This is a house of bourjoi ideology,” he said. “It stinks of the pre-revolutionary cult. It’s disgusting and abominable. These books must be destroyed.”

“It’s my book!” cried Lucy in a shrill voice. “Give it to me!”

Ivanovich took Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales in its tattered green cover and, grasping it with his big hairy blacksmith’s hands, tore it in half.

At that moment Vladimir came into action. The sight of this book being torn in half enraged him. He flung himself off the top of the stove and made a rush at Igor.

“How dare you?” he cried. “That is Mamma’s book. It’s my favourite book. I love it. I won’t let it be torn up.”

He tried to get hold of the book, but Ivanovich held it beyond his reach and gave the small boy a blow which sent him sprawling across the room. Then he tore the book to pieces.

“This is a serious affair,” he said. “Here in this room is an example of the debauchery of the younger mind. Dmitri Mihaelovich, you and your companions are betraying the Revolution. You are the poisoners of Russian boyhood. I shall make a report about you, you dirty hunchback.”

He picked up his fur cap and strode to the door, flung it open and went out into the frosty air which for a moment leapt into the room like a cold sword-blade. It was Dmitri’s mother who shut the door. Vladimir was on the floor sobbing and picking up the torn leaves of Hans Andersen. Lucy stood looking at Dmitri with fear in her eyes. Dmitri spoke a few words in a low voice.

“I am lost!”

It was three days later in the early morning when two Red soldiers and an officer of the Cheka in civilian clothes came to Dmitri’s house and arrested him. Before he was led away he went towards Lucy and took her hands and kissed them. He spoke to her in a strangled voice.

“You came with beauty into this house. You were kind and did not look with horror on my hunchback. Your laughter filled this room with glamour and delight. I thank you a million times.”

Lucy put her arms about his, her hands on his hunched back. She was sobbing when the officer of the Cheka spoke a word and the two soldiers grabbed Dmitri by each arm and led him away. Dmitri’s mother gave a piercing shriek and fell to the floor where Lucy knelt beside her. To Vladimir it was all very exciting.