Netochka Nezvanova (Penguin ed.) Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  I cannot remember my life before the age of about nine. I do not know quite why, but nothing that happened before then left a very strong impression. From the time when I was eight and a half I begin to remember everything very clearly, day by day without a break, as if it all happened only yesterday. It is true there are one or two things I can remember from my early childhood, but in a dreamlike fashion – a little lamp always burning before an old-fashioned icon in a dark corner of the room; then being knocked down in the street by a horse, after which I am told I lay ill for three months; then, too, times during that illness when I would wake up in the night, lying beside my mother in her bed and frightened by morbid dreams, by the stillness of the night and by the mice scratching in the corner, and all the time trembling with fear, huddling terrified under the bedclothes but never daring to wake her up – from which I concluded that my fear of her was the greatest terror. But from that moment when I suddenly became aware of myself I developed remarkably quickly and was more than capable of contending with many unchildlike impressions. Everything became clear to me and I understood things swiftly and easily. The feelings I remember well are vivid and miserable; it was these feelings I began experiencing every day, growing stronger and stronger as time went by and leaving indelible impressions. The whole time during which I lived with my parents is shrouded in a strange gloomy colour, as is my entire childhood.

  It feels now as if I had suddenly become conscious, as if I had woken from a deep sleep (although at the time, of course, the change cannot have been so startling). I found myself in a large low-ceilinged room that was dusty and dirty. The walls were coloured a dirty grey; in the corner stood a large Russian stove; the windows looked out on the street, or more accurately on the roof of the house opposite, and were short and broad like chinks. The windowsills were so high above the floor that I remember having to push a table and chair underneath them in order to clamber up to the window. I was very fond of sitting there when no one was at home. Since the room was the attic of a big six-storeyed house I could see half the town from it. Our furniture consisted of nothing but the remains of an oilcloth sofa with the stuffing coming out and covered in dust, a simple white table, two chairs, my mother’s bed, a little corner cupboard with something in it, a chest of drawers which always stood tilted to one side and a torn paper screen.

  I remember it was dusk; everything was in a disordered mess – brushes, rags, wooden bowls, a broken bottle and God knows what else. I remember that my mother was terribly excited and crying about something. My stepfather was sitting in the corner dressed in the tattered frock-coat he always wore. He made some sarcastic remark which made her angrier than ever, and then the brushes and bowls began to fly. I burst into tears, screaming and rushing over to them both. I was in a terrible state of panic and clung tightly to my stepfather to protect him. Goodness knows why, but I felt that my mother had no reason to be angry with him, that he was not to blame, and I wanted to beg forgiveness for him and bear whatever punishment myself. I was dreadfully afraid of my mother and presumed that everyone was. At first she was stunned by my behaviour and then, grabbing me by the arm, she dragged me behind the screen. I knocked my arm rather painfully against the bedstead, but my terror was greater than the pain and I did not even wince. I remember too that my mother began speaking to my father, heatedly and bitterly, and pointing at me (from now onwards I shall refer to my stepfather as my father, for it was actually much later on that I discovered he was not my real father). This whole scene lasted a couple of hours; shaking in anticipation, I tried as hard as I could to guess how it would all end up. At last the arguing subsided and mother went out somewhere. Then my father called me to him, kissed me, stroked my hair, put me on his knee and let me nestle close to him. It was, I suppose, the first time I had received any parental caress and perhaps that is why I started, from that moment, to remember everything so distinctly. I realized too that I had won my father’s favour through defending him and for the first time it occurred to me that he had a great deal to put up with from my mother. That idea stayed with me, troubling me more and more by the day.

  From that moment there arose in me a boundless love for my father, but it was a strange sort of love, not a childlike feeling. I would say that it was more like a compassionate motherly feeling, if one can use that expression of a child! My father always seemed to me so pitiful, so unbearably tormented, such a crushed creature and so full of suffering that it would have been horribly unnatural for me not to have loved him passionately, not to have comforted him and been tender towards him, not to have done everything possible for him. But even now I cannot understand how I got the idea into my head that my father was such a martyr and the unhappiest man in the world. Whatever can have inspired that idea! How could I, a child, have had any understanding of his personal misfortunes? Yet in my own way I did understand something, although it all became twisted and refashioned in my imagination. But still today I cannot conceive how I came to have these impressions. Perhaps my mother was a bit too stern with me and so I clung to my father as if to a fellow-sufferer.

  I have already described my first awakening from childhood sleep; my first engagement with life. My heart was wounded from the very beginning and my development began with incomprehensible and exhausting rapidity. I was no longer satisfied by external impressions alone and I began to think, to reason, to observe. But these faculties were put into use at such an unnaturally early age that my mind could not really interpret things properly and I found myself living in a world of my own. Everything around me started turning into the fairy tale which my father frequently told me and which I interpreted as reality. A strange idea arose in me. I became fully aware, although I do not know how it came about, that I was living in an unusual family situation and that my parents were quite unlike any of the other people whom I chanced to meet. ‘Why,’ I used to wonder, ‘why are other people so unlike my parents, even in appearance? Why do I see laughter on the faces of others, while in our little corner no one laughs or shows any happiness? What power, what force has caused me, a child of nine, to analyse every word spoken to me by anyone I chance to meet on the stairs, or in the street when, wrapping mother’s old jacket around me to cover my rags, I go out with a few copecks to buy the odd ounce of sugar, tea or bread?’ I understood, and again I do not know how I came to understand, that there was an everlasting, unbearable air of sorrow in our attic room. I searched for an answer and I do not know who it was that helped me to unravel the riddle in the way I did. I blamed my mother and I saw her as my father’s evil genius, but, I repeat, I have no idea how such a monstrous image developed. And the more attached I grew to my father the more I came to loathe my mother. Still now this memory torments me sorely. There was another incident which, even more than the first, contributed to this strange devotion I had for my father. One day, at about nine o’clock in the evening, my mother sent me to the shop to buy some yeast. My father was not at home. On the way back I slipped in the street and spilled the whole cupful. The first thing that came to my mind was my mother’s wrath, but at the same time I felt a horrible pain in my left arm and I could not get up. Passers-by gathered around me; an old woman was helping me and a boy running by knocked my head with a key. At last I was on my feet. I picked up the fragments of broken cup and set off, swaying and staggering, when I suddenly caught sight of my father. He was standing in a crowd before a grand house opposite our lodgings. The house belonged to a well-to-do family and was splendidly illuminated. A number of carriages had driven up to the entrance, and strains of music drifted down from the windows into the street. I clutched my father by the tails of his frock-coat, pointed to the pieces of broken cup and began tearfully telling him that I was afraid of going back to mother. I felt sure he would stand up for me. But why, I wonder, was I so sure that he loved me more than my mother did? Why was it that I could approach him without fear? Taking me by the hand, he began comforting me and then, lifting me up in his
arms, he said he wanted to show me something. He was holding me by my bruised arm, which hurt terribly, and I was unable to see anything. But I did not cry, through fear of offending him. He kept asking me whether I could see anything and, doing my utmost to give him an answer that would please him, I said that I could see some red curtains. He wanted to carry me over to the other side of the street, closer to the house, when suddenly, I don’t know why, I started crying, hugging him and begging to be taken to mother. I remember that at the time my father’s caresses were upsetting me and I could not bear the thought that one of the two people whom I so longed to love did love me and treated me kindly, while the other intimidated me and made me afraid of even approaching her. However, my mother was hardly angry at all and immediately sent me to bed. I remember that the pain in my arm grew worse and worse, making me feverish, and yet I was particularly happy because it had all turned out so well. I dreamed of the house with the red curtains throughout the night.

  When I woke up the following day my first thought and concern was for the house with the red curtains. As soon as mother had gone outside I clambered up to the little window and gazed out at the house. For a long time it had fascinated my childish curiosity. I particularly liked looking at it in the evening when the street was lit up and the crimson-red curtains behind the plate-glass windows gleamed with a peculiar blood-red glow. Sumptuous carriages, drawn by handsome proud horses, were continually driving up to the front door, and everything aroused my curiosity: the clamour and commotion at the entrance, the different-coloured lamps of the carriages and the lavishly dressed women who drove up in them. In my child’s imagination all this assumed an image of regal magnificence and fairy-tale enchantment. However, after the encounter with my father outside the house, it all became doubly magical and intriguing. My inflamed imagination started conjuring up the most incredible thoughts and suppositions. And it is hardly surprising that, living as I did amid two people as strange as my father and mother, I did become a rather unusual and peculiar child. I was always struck by the contrast in their characters, the way, for instance, that my mother fussed incessantly and worried over our miserable household, reproaching my father for the fact that it was she alone who provided for us all. I could not help asking why he did nothing to help her, why he lived like a stranger in the house. I gained a little insight from some of the things my mother said and it was with surprise that I learnt that my father was an artist (the word stuck in my mind) and a man of genius. I soon formed a clear concept of an artist as being a man unique and apart from the others. Possibly my father’s behaviour contributed to this idea. There was something he once said that made an exceptionally strong impression upon me. He said: ‘The time will come when I shall no longer live in poverty, when I shall be a gentleman. When mother dies I shall be born again.’ I remember how these words frightened me terribly at first. I could not bear to stay in the same room as him and ran out into the chilly hallway, where I leant against a windowsill, buried my face in my hands and sobbed. Later on, when I thought it over and reconciled myself to my father’s terrible wish, my wild imagination came to my assistance. I could not be tormented by uncertainty for long and had to reach some mode of acceptance. And so – goodness knows how it all began – I fastened on to the idea that when my mother died my father would leave this miserable attic room and go away somewhere, taking me with him. But where? Not even my fantasy could find an answer to that. I only remember that I used to dream of adorning this place with the most brilliant, luxurious and splendid things that my mind could conjure. It seemed to me that we would soon be rich. I would not be sent on errands to the shops, which I always found very burdensome because the children living next door invariably teased me when I left the house, and I would be so nervous, especially if I was carrying milk or oil, knowing that, if I spilt it, I would pay for it dearly. Then I resolved, dreaming, that my father would immediately dress himself well and we would move into a magnificent house. And here the grand house with the crimson curtains, and the experience there with my father, came to the assistance of my imagination. And I soon conjectured everything in terms of moving to that house and enjoying uninterrupted peace and comfort. From then on I used to look out of the window in the evenings, gazing with intense curiosity at the enchanted house, familiarizing myself with the flow of visitors, who were dressed with an elegance and refinement such as I had never seen before. I imagined the harmonious strains of music drifting through the windows and I watched the shadows flitting across the curtains, always trying to guess what was going on there and always convinced that this was the realm of paradise and eternal joy. I loathed our miserable lodgings and the rags I had to wear. One day my mother scolded me and ordered me to come down from the window. It was then that the idea occurred to me that she disliked my looking at that house, that she did not want me to think about it, that she disliked the thought of our happiness and wanted to interfere even with this… I looked at mother intently and suspiciously for the rest of the evening.

  How did I develop such cruel feelings towards a creature who suffered so eternally as my mother? It is only now that I begin to understand what a misery her life was, and I cannot think of her tortured existence without feeling pain in my heart. Even then, in that dark strange period of my childhood, a period of quite abnormal development, my heart often ached from pain and pity; fear, confusion and doubt weighed heavily on my soul. Pangs of conscience and self-reproach rose up within me and I felt distressed and miserable on account of my unjust feelings towards my mother. For some reason we were estranged from one another and I cannot remember feeling affectionate towards her. To this day there are some trifling memories that still lacerate my heart. I remember how once (and what I am now describing is trivial and elementary and not really of a great deal of importance, but it is nevertheless precisely these kinds of memories that particularly torment me and are most painfully imprinted on my mind), one evening when my father was not at home, my mother sent me to the shop to buy her some tea and some sugar. She kept hesitating, changing her mind and counting over her copecks as she tried to calculate the pitiful sum she could afford to spend. I think she must have spent nearly half an hour counting them and still she could not work it out satisfactorily. At times she sunk into a kind of stupor and kept on repeating something, counting aloud in a low monotonous voice as if the words were falling out of her mouth by themselves. Her lips and her cheeks were pale, her hands trembled and she kept on shaking her head, as she thought in solitude.

  ‘No, it isn’t necessary,’ she said, glancing at me. ‘I ought really to go to bed, don’t you think? Are you sleepy, Netochka?’ I did not answer; she lifted my head and looked at me so sweetly and tenderly, her own face glowing with such a warm maternal smile, that my heart throbbed violently. Besides, she had called me Netochka, from which I could tell that she was feeling particularly fond of me. She had herself coined that name as an affectionate version of Anna, and when she used it I knew she was feeling close to me. I was so moved that I felt a strong urge to hug her, to cling to her and weep with her. For a long time the poor woman continued to stroke my hair almost mechanically, hardly knowing what she was doing and repeating: ‘My child, Annetta, Netochka.’ The tears were streaming down my face and it required effort to control them. I stubbornly refused to let go and display my feelings. I do not believe that this kind of cruelty was natural to me, or that her severity could have turned me against her in this way. No! I was tainted by my fantastic, exclusive love for my father. Sometimes, while I was falling asleep, huddling beneath the chilly covers on my little bed in the corner, I would begin to feel somehow strange. Memories would rise up in my mind, memories of when I was smaller, not so long ago, when I used to sleep in mother’s bed and was less afraid of waking up in the night, for I could wriggle up to her, squeezing my eyes tightly closed, and cling firmly to her until I fell asleep again. I still felt that I could not help secretly loving her. I have noticed that many children are abnormally unfeel
ing and if they do love one person it tends to be to the exclusion of others. And that is how it was with me.

  Sometimes there was a death-like silence in our attic for weeks on end. My father and mother would cease quarrelling and I would live with them as before, always silent, broody, fretting, and trying to reach somewhere else in my dreams. Watching them together, I could fully understand their relationship with one another. I realized that there was a vague but permanent antagonism between them, which produced an atmosphere of grief and disorder that permeated our life. Of course I only understood it to the extent I was capable of at that time, without grasping the cause and the effect. At times, during the long winter evenings, forgotten in my corner, I would avidly watch them for hours, gazing into my father’s face and trying to guess his thoughts. My mother sometimes startled and frightened me. She would pace up and down the room for hours without stopping. She even did it in the night when, tormented by insomnia, she used to get up and start pacing, mumbling away to herself as if she were alone, flinging her arms in the air, folding them across her bosom, or wringing her hands in an expression of dreadful, exhausting grief. At times the tears flowed down her face, probably tears that had no specific meaning to her. And at times she collapsed in a state of oblivion. She was suffering from a very serious disease that she neglected entirely.

  I remember that my own loneliness and the silence I dared not break became increasingly oppressive. For a whole year I had been living an interior life, always thinking, dreaming and secretly tormented by the unintelligible and obscure impulses that were developing inside me. I was as wild as a forest animal. Finally my father began to take notice of me; he called me over to him and asked why I stared at him so much. I do not remember what answer I gave, but I do remember that he thought a little and eventually said that tomorrow he would teach me the alphabet, so that I could read. I awaited this event impatiently and dreamt about it all night without really knowing what an alphabet was. The next day my father did in fact begin teaching me. Quickly grasping what was required of me, I learnt rapidly, for I knew that this would please him. It was the happiest time of my life. When he praised me for my intelligence, stroked my hair and kissed me I almost wept for joy. My father gradually grew fond of me and I became less afraid of speaking to him. Sometimes we talked for hours, never growing weary, although I frequently failed to understand a word of what he said to me. But I was a little afraid of him, afraid he might think I was bored with him, and so I did all that was possible to pretend I understood everything. It became a habit between us to sit down together in the evenings. As soon as it began to grow dark and he came home, I went to him at once with my reading book. He would sit me down opposite him on a little footstool and after the lesson he used to read to me. Without understanding anything I kept laughing and laughing, hoping to please him by doing so. It amused him to see me laugh and he would grow more cheerful. One day after the lesson he told me a fairy tale. It was the first tale I had ever heard. I sat spellbound. I followed the story with great excitement and found myself drifting off into another world. By the time the story reached its end I was quite ecstatic. It was not so much the story that produced this effect as the fact that I took it to be true and, giving free rein to my elaborate fantasy, I confused fact and fiction. I constantly conjured up the house with the crimson curtains and somehow my father appeared as a character in the story (goodness knows how, since he was reading it), and my mother was there too, doing something or other in order to prevent my father and me from going off together, I do not know where; and I too was taking part, with my incredible daydreams and my brain brimming with the wildest and most impossible phantoms. All this was so muddled and confused in my mind that it soon turned into utter chaos. For a time I completely lost my faculties of judgement, all sense of time and reality disappeared, and I have no idea where I thought I was. I was longing to speak to my father about what the future held for us, what he was waiting for and where he was going to take me when we finally abandoned the attic room. I felt quite sure that all this was about to happen, but how and in what way it would be achieved I had no idea, and I only made myself suffer more through worrying about it. Sometimes, usually in the evening, I felt that at any moment my father might give a furtive wink, indicating that I must go out into the passage; I imagined myself creeping past my mother, picking up my book and the one and only picture – a wretched old lithograph that had been hanging, unframed, on the wall since time immemorial and which I had firmly decided to take with us – and then we would run away together and never see mother again. One day when mother was out I chose a moment when father seemed to be in a good mood, which was usually after he had been drinking, went up to him and began talking about something, intending to steer the subject towards my cherished plan. Once I had succeeded in making him laugh, warmly embracing him and trembling in anticipation of the alarming things I was about to say, I began questioning him in a muddled and confused manner: When and where would we be going? What should we take with us? How would we live? And would it be in the house with the red curtains?