Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

very good thing, since she was a lone weak woman, with no other means of support in case of sickness or when she became old. But the expression of his face was so uninviting, that she kept all this to herself.

To the right of the railway there was a broad stretch of undulating plain, dark green with the continual moisture, and on its edge there stood grey little houses, just like toys, and upon a high green hill, at the foot of which flowed a silvery river, was perched a similarly toy-like white church. When the train, with a noisy metallic clanking, which suddenly became intensified, rushed on to a bridge, and seemed to hang suspended in the air over the mirror-like surface of a river, Petka gave a little shiver of fright and surprise, and started back from the window; but immediately turned to it again, for fear of losing a single detail of the journey. His eyes had long ceased to look sleepy, and the lines had disappeared from his face. It was as though someone had passed a hot flatiron over his face, smoothing out the wrinkles, and leaving the surface white and shining.

For the first two days of his sojourn at the bungalow the wealth and force of the new impressions which inundated him from above and from below confused his timid little soul. In contradistinction to the savages of a former age, who felt lost on coming into a city from the wilderness, this modern savage, who had been snatched away from the stony embrace of the massive city, felt weak and impotent in the face of nature. Here everything was to him living, sentient, and possessed of conscious will. He was afraid of the forest, which gently rustled over his head, and was so dark, so passive, so terrible in its immensity. But the bright green joyful meadows, which seemed to be singing with all their bright flowers, he loved, and wished to fondle them as a sister; and the dark blue sky called him to itself, and laughed like a mother. Petka would become agitated, shudder, and grow pale, would smile at something, and slowly, like an old man, walk along the outskirts of the forest, and on the wooded shore of the pond. There, weary and out of breath, he would fling himself down on the thick damp grass, and sink into it, only his little freckled nose appearing above the green surface. For the first two days he was always going back to his mother, and nestling up to her: and when the master of the house asked him whether he liked being at the bungalow, he would smile in confusion and answer:

“Very much!”

And then he would go off again to the threatening forest, and the still water, and it was as though he were questioning them.

But after two days Petka had arrived at a complete understanding with Nature. This was brought about by the cooperation of a schoolboy named Mitya from old Tzaritzyno. The schoolboy had a swarthy countenance, the colour of a second-class carriage. His hair stood erect on the crown of his head, and was quite white, so bleached was it by the sun. He was fishing in the pond, when Petka caught sight of him and unceremoniously entered into conversation with him. They came to terms with wonderful promptitude; he allowed Petka to hold one of the rods, and afterwards took him some distance off to bathe. Petka was very much afraid of going into the water, but when once in, he did not wish to come out again, but pretended to swim, putting his forehead and nose above the water. Then he got a great gulp of water in his mouth, and beat the water with his hands and made a great splashing. At this moment he was very like a puppy, that had for the first time fallen into the water. When Petka dressed himself he was as blue as a corpse with the cold, and as he talked his teeth chattered. At the proposal of Mitya, who was of inexhaustible resource, they next explored the ruins of a mansion. They clambered upon the roof overgrown with shoots, and wandered between the broken-down walls of the great building. They did enjoy themselves there! All about heaps of stones were piled up, on which they climbed with difficulty, and between which grew young rowan and birch trees. It was still as death, and it seemed as though someone suddenly jumped out from a corner, or that some horrible, terrible face appeared through the aperture left by a broken window. By degrees Petka began to feel quite at home at the bungalow, and he forgot that there was any Osip Abramovich or barber’s shop in the world.

“Just look how he is putting on flesh! He’s a regular merchant!” Nadejda at this time would exclaim with delight.

She was stout enough herself and her face shone with the heat of the kitchen like a copper samovar. She attributed his improvement to the fact that she gave him plenty to eat. But in reality Petka ate very little indeed, not because he did not care for his food, but because he could scarcely find time for it. If only it had been possible to bolt his food without mastication!⁠—but one must masticate, and during the intervals swing one’s feet, since Nadejda ate deuced slowly, polishing the bones and wiping her fingers on her apron, while she kept up a perpetual chatter. But he was up to the neck in business: he had to bathe four times, to cut a fishing-rod in the hazel coppice, to dig for worms⁠—all this required time. Now Petka ran about barefoot, and that was a thousand times pleasanter than wearing boots with thick soles: the rustling ground now warmed, now cooled his feet so deliciously. He had even discarded his secondhand school-jacket, in which he looked like a full-grown master-barber, and thereby became amazingly rejuvenated.