Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

Uncle Maxim was very much disturbed by this occurrence. He had of late ordered a number of physiological, psychological, and educational works, and with his habitual energy had devoted himself to the study of all that science has revealed concerning the mysterious growth and development of a child’s soul. The delight of these studies had so charmed him that all brooding fancies concerning his own uselessness in the battle of life, “the worm grovelling in the dust,” and “the hospital ambulance,” had long since vanished from the invalid’s square head, and in their stead appeared a deep and thoughtful absorption; rose-colored hopes even came from time to time to warm the veteran’s heart. Uncle Maxim grew more and more convinced that Nature, although she had deprived the boy of his sight, had not in other respects dealt unjustly with him. He was a creature who responded with remarkable activity and completeness to the exterior impressions accessible to him. Uncle Maxim conceived it to be his duty to develop the latent capabilities of the boy, so that the injustice of his doom might be counterbalanced by the efforts of his own mind and influence, and that he might be enabled to send as a substitute into the battle of life another and a younger combatant, who without his influence would be lost to the service.

“Who knows,” thought the old Garibaldian, “but there may be a fight in which neither lance nor sword are needed? Perchance he with whom fate has dealt so hardly may sometime employ the weapons that he is capable of wielding in the defence of others, victims of fate like himself; and then my life will not have been spent in vain, old crippled soldier that I am!”

Even the freethinkers during the forties and fifties of the present century were not free from superstitious ideas regarding the “mysterious designs of Nature.” Therefore it was not surprising that with the gradual development of the child, who showed unusual gifts, Uncle Maxim should have arrived at the firm conviction that his very blindness was only one of the manifestations of those mysterious designs. “One unfortunate for another,”⁠—this was the motto which Uncle Maxim had already inscribed on his pupil’s standard.

After that first excursion in the spring, the boy was delirious for several days. He either lay quiet and motionless upon his bed, or kept up a constant muttering, as if he were listening to something. Meanwhile the peculiar expression of wonder never left his face.

“He really looks as if he were trying in vain to understand something,” said the young mother.

Maxim had grown thoughtful; he merely nodded. He had suspected that the boy’s strange alarm, as well as his swoon, might be attributed to the numerous impressions which the boy’s perceptive faculties had been unable to grasp; and he decided to allow these impressions to find their way into the mind of the convalescent child by degrees, disintegrated, so to speak, into their component parts. The windows of the invalid’s room had been closed, but when he began to recover, they were occasionally opened. Some member of the family used to lead him about the rooms, and into the vestibule, the yard, and the garden. Every time his mother observed a look of alarm upon his face, she would explain to him the nature of the sounds that perplexed him. “That is the shepherd’s horn you hear beyond the wood,” she explained; “and that sound which you hear above the twittering of the sparrows is the note of the redwing. Listen to the stork gurgling on his wheel.40 He has just arrived from distant lands, and is now building his nest on the old spot.”

As the mother spoke thus, the boy turned toward her, his face beaming with gratitude, and seized her hand and nodded, as with a thoughtful and intelligent expression he continued to listen.

Now, when anything attracted his attention he always asked what it meant; and his mother, or more frequently Uncle Maxim, would explain to him the nature of the objects or of the creatures that caused these various sounds. His mother’s explanations, more lively and graphic, impressed the boy with greater force; but sometimes this impression would be too painful. Upon the features of the young woman, herself suffering, could be read the expression of her inmost feelings, and in her eyes a silent protest or a look of pain, as she strove to convey to the child an idea of form and color. With contracted brow and wrinkled forehead the boy concentrated his whole attention. Evidently his brain was at work struggling with difficult problems; his unpractised imagination strove to shape from the descriptions given him a new image⁠—a feat which it was unable to perform. At such times Uncle Maxim always frowned with displeasure; and when the tears appeared in the mother’s eyes, and the child’s face grew pale from the effect of his intense effort, Maxim would interfere, and taking his sister’s place would tell his nephew stories, in the invention of which he would try to use only such ideas as related to sound and space. Then the face of the blind boy would grow calmer.

“And is he big?” the child asked about the stork, who seemed to be beating in his nest a slow tattoo. Saying this he began to spread out his arms; for this was his custom whenever he asked such questions, and Uncle Maxim would always tell him when he had extended them far enough. But this time he had stretched out his little arms to their utmost limit, and Uncle Maxim said⁠—

“No, he is still larger. If he were brought into this room and put upon the floor, his head would reach above the back of the chair.”

“He is large,” said the boy thoughtfully; “and the redwing is like this,” slightly parting his folded palms.

“Yes, the redwing is like this. But the large birds never