holes and refused to be enticed out by my frogs. We were going hungry,
and Mother finally decided to send me and my sister to the village.
I had never been in the country, but I knew that my father had a farm
there. A farm! How disappointed I was on discovering that this was
simply a cottage with a household plot, a little, overgrown vegetable
garden in the middle of which stood a few aged apple trees.
The house was a small one, which having once slumped on its side,
remained leaning sideways. The roof was tilted, the window-panes were
smashed and the base logs were bent. The Russian stove seemed to be
all right until we started a fire in it. Smoke-blackened benches were
ranged around the walls, and in one corner hung an icon, on whose
grimy panels a face could just be made out.
Whatever its faults, it was our house, and we undid our bundles,
stuffed out mattresses with straw, glazed the windows and settled down
to live in it.
Mother stayed with us only about three weeks, then went back to
town. Grandma Petrovna agreed to take her place. She was Father's
aunt, and that made her a sort of grandmother to us. She was a kind-
hearted old woman, even though it was hard to get used to her grey
beard and moustache. The only drawback was that she herself needed
looking after. In fact, my sister and I looked after her all the winter,
carrying water and heating her stove, since her cottage, which was little
better than ours, was quite close.
That winter I grew attached to my sister. She was getting on for eight.
Everyone in our family was dark, but she was fair, with fuzzy little
pigtails and blue eyes. We were all rather taciturn, especially Mother,
but my sister would start off talking the moment she opened her eyes. I
never saw her cry, and it was the easiest thing in the world to make her
laugh. Her name was Sanya, too, the same as mine—1 being Alexander
and she Alexandra. Aunt Dasha had taught her to sing, and every
evening she sang long songs in such a serious, thin little voice that you
couldn't help laughing.
And how handy she was at housekeeping, and she only seven, mind
you! Of course, running the house was a simple affair—in one corner of
the attic lay potatoes, in another beets, cabbages, onions and salt. For
bread we went to Petrovna's.
So there we were, two children in an empty house, in a remote
snowed-up village. Every morning we used to tread a path in the snow
to Petrovna's cottage. Only in the evenings did we feel a bit scared. It
was so quiet you could almost hear the soft sound of the falling snow,
and amidst this stillness the wind would suddenly start moaning in the
chimney.
20
CHAPTER FIVE
DOCTOR IVAN IVANOVICH.
I LEARN TO SPEAK
Then one evening, when we had just gone to bed and my sister had
just fallen silent, dropping off to sleep as she always did with the last
uttered word, and that saddening hush fell upon the world, with the
wind beginning to moan in the chimney, I heard a tap on the window.
A tall bearded man in a sheepskin coat and cap with ear-flaps stood
there; he was so stiff with cold that when I lit the lamp and let him in he
could not even close the door behind him. Screening the light with my
hand, I noticed that his nose was quite white—frost-nipped. He bent to
take off his knapsack and suddenly sat down on the floor.
That was how he first appeared before me, the man I am indebted to
for being able to write this story—frozen almost to death, crawling
towards me on all fours. He tried to put his trembling fingers into his
mouth, and sat on the floor breathing heavily. I started to help him off
with his coat. He muttered something and slumped over on his side in a
dead faint.
I had once seen Mother lying in a faint and Aunt Dasha had breathed
into her mouth. I did exactly the same now. My visitor was lying by the
warm stove and I don't know what it was in the end that brought him
round; I only knew that I blew like mad till I felt dizzy. However that
may be, he came to, sat up and began warming himself up vigorously.
The colour returned to his nose. He even attempted a smile when I
poured him out a mug of hot water.
"Are you children alone here?"
Before Sanya could answer "Yes," the man was asleep. He dropped off
so suddenly that I was afraid he had died. But as though in answer to my
thoughts he started to snore.
He came round properly the next day. I woke up to find him sitting on
the stove ledge with my sister and they were talking. She already knew
that his name was Ivan Ivanovich, that he had lost his way, and that we
were not to say a word about him to anyone, otherwise they'd put him in
irons. I remember that my sister and I grasped at once that our visitor
was in some sort of danger and we tacitly decided never to breathe a
word about him to anyone. It was easier for me, of course, to keep quiet,
than it was for Sanya.
Ivan Ivanovich sat on the stove ledge with his hands tucked under him,
listening while she chattered away. He had been told everything: that
Father had been put in prison, that we handed in a petition, that Mother
had brought us here and gone back to town, that I was dumb, that
Grandma Petrovna lived here—second house from the well—and that
she, too, had a beard, only it was smaller and grey.
"Ah, you little darlings," said Ivan Ivanovich, jumping down from the
stove.
He had light-coloured eyes, but his beard was black and smooth. At
first I thought it strange that he made so many unnecessary gestures; it
seemed as if at any moment he would reach for his ear round the back of
his head or scratch the sole of his foot. But I soon got used to him. When
21
talking, he would suddenly pick something up and begin tossing it in the
air or balancing it on his hand like a juggler.
"I say, children, I'm a doctor, you know," he said one day. "You just
tell me if there's anything wrong with you. I'll put you right in a tick."
We were both well, but for some reason he refused to go and see the
village elder, whose daughter was sick.
But in such a position
I'm in a terrible funk
In case the Inquisition
Is tipped off by the monk,
he said with a laugh,
It was from him that I first heard poetry. He often quoted verses,
sometimes even sang them or muttered them, his eyebrows raised as he
squatted before the fire Turkish fashion.
At first he seemed pleased that I couldn't ask him anything, especially
when he woke up in the night at the slightest sound of steps outside the
window and lay for a long time leaning on his elbow, listening. Or when
he hid himself in the attic and sat there till dark—he spent a whole day
there once, I remember. St. George's Day it was. Or when he refused to
meet Petrovna.
But after two or three days he became interested in my dumbness.
"Why don't you speak? Don't you want to?"
I looked at him in silence.
"I tell you, you must speak. You can hear, so you ought to be able to
speak. It's a very rare case yours—I mean being dumb but not deaf.
Maybe you're deaf and dumb?"