Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

gruff workman. “With your father?”

“I have no father,” answered the boy, as he scanned the faces round him with his tearful eyes.

“So you’ve got no father, that’s how it is,” said the workman gravely, and shook his head. “Then where’s your mother?”

“I have a mother,” the boy replied.

“What’s her name?”

“Mamma,” said the boy; then, upon reflection, he added, “black mamma.”

Someone laughed in the crowd.

“Black? I wonder whether that’s the name of the family?” suggested the gruff workman.

“First it was a white mamma, and now it’s a black mamma,” said the boy.

“There’s no making head or tail of this,” decided the policeman. “I’ll take him to the station. They’ll telephone about it.”

He went to the gate and rang. But the house-porter had already seen the policeman and, besom in hand, he was coming to the gate. The policeman ordered him to take the boy to the station. But the boy suddenly bethought himself, and cried out: “Never mind, let me go, I’ll find the way myself.”

Perhaps he was frightened of the house-porter’s besom, or perhaps he had really recalled something; at any rate he ran off so hard that Saksaoolov almost lost sight of him. But soon the boy walked more quietly. He turned street corners and ran from one side to the other searching for, but not finding, his home. Saksaoolov followed him in silence. He was not an adept at talking to children.

At last the boy grew tired. He stopped before a lamppost and leant against it. Tears gleamed in his eyes.

“My dear boy,” said Saksaoolov, “haven’t you found it yet?”

The lad looked at him with his sad, soft eyes, and Saksaoolov suddenly understood what had impelled him to follow the boy with such resolution. There was something in the face and glance of the little wanderer that gave him an unusual likeness to Tamar.

“My dear boy, what’s your name?” asked Saksaoolov in a tender and agitated voice.

“Lesha,” said the boy.

“Tell me, dear Lesha, do you live with your mother?”

“Yes, with mamma. Only now it’s a black mamma⁠—and before it was a white mamma.”

Saksaoolov thought that by black mamma he meant a nun.

“How did you get lost?” he asked.

“I walked with mamma, and we walked and walked. She told me to sit down and wait, and then she went away. And I got frightened.”

“Who is your mother?”

“My mamma? She’s so black and so angry.”

“What does she do?”

The boy thought awhile.

“She drinks coffee,” he said.

“What else does she do?”

“She quarrels with the lodgers,” answered Lesha after a pause.

“And where is your white mamma?”

“She was carried away. She was put into a coffin and carried away. And papa was carried away.”

The boy pointed into the distance somewhere and burst into tears.

“What’s to be done with him?” thought Saksaoolov.

Then suddenly the boy began to run again. After he had turned a few corners he went more quietly. Saksaoolov overtook him a second time. The lad’s face expressed a strange mixture of joy and fear.

“Here’s the Gliukhov house,” he said to Saksaoolov, as he pointed to a huge, five-storeyed monstrosity.

At this moment there appeared at the gates of the Gliukhov house a black-haired, black-eyed woman in a black dress, a black kerchief with white dots on her head. The boy shrank back in fear.

“Mamma,” he whispered.

His stepmother looked at him with astonishment.

“How did you get here, you young whelp!” she shrieked out. “I told you to sit on the bench, didn’t I?”

She seemed to be on the point of whipping him when she noticed that some sort of gentleman, serious and dignified in appearance, was watching them, and she spoke more softly.

“Can’t I leave you for a half-hour anywhere without you taking to your heels? I’ve walked my feet off looking for you, you young whelp!”

She caught the child’s very small hand in her own huge one and dragged him within the gate. Saksaoolov made a note of the house number and the name of the street, and went home.

IV

Saksaoolov liked to listen to the opinions of Fedota. When he returned home he told him about the boy Lesha.

“She did it on purpose,” decided Fedota. “Just think what a witch she is to take the boy such a way from home!”

“Why should she?” Saksaoolov asked.

“It’s simple enough. What can you expect of a stupid woman! She thought the boy would get lost somewhere, and someone would pick him up. After all, she’s a stepmother. What’s a homeless child to her?”

Saksaoolov was incredulous. He observed: “But the police would have found her out.”

“Of course they would; but you can’t tell, she may have meant to leave town; then find her if you can.”

Saksaoolov smiled.

“Really,” he thought, “my Fedota should be a district attorney.”

He fell into a doze that evening as he sat reading before a lamp. Tamar appeared to him⁠—the gentle, white Tamar⁠—and sat down beside him. Her face was strangely like Lesha’s face. She looked steadily and persistently, and awaited something. It tormented Saksaoolov to see her bright, pleading eyes, and not to know what she wanted. He rose quickly and went to the armchair where he thought he saw Tamar sitting. He stopped before her and asked loudly and with emotion:

“What do you wish? Tell me.”

But she was no longer there.

“It was only a dream,” thought Saksaoolov sadly.

V

The next day, as he was leaving the academy exhibition, Saksaoolov met the Gorodischevs. He told the girl about Lesha.

“Poor boy,” said Valeria Mikhailovna quietly. “His stepmother is trying to get rid of him.”

“That’s yet to be proved,” said Saksaoolov.

He felt annoyed that everyone, including Fedota and Valeria, should look so tragically upon a simple incident.

“That’s quite evident,” said Valeria Mikhailovna warmly. “There’s no father, and only a stepmother to whom he is simply a burden. No good will come of it⁠—the boy will have a sad end.”

“You take too gloomy a view of the matter,” observed Saksaoolov, with a smile.

“You ought to take him to yourself,” Valeria Mikhailovna advised him.

“I?” asked Saksaoolov with astonishment.

“You are living