His reflections were most complex and varied. He imagined how his father would suddenly get both the Vladimir and the Andrew, and how as a result of that he would be much kinder today at the lesson, and how he himself, when he grew up, would get all the decorations, and the one they would invent that was higher than the Andrew. No sooner would they invent it than he would deserve it. They would invent a still higher one, and he would also deserve it at once.
The time passed in such reflections, and when the teacher came, the lesson about the adverbial modifiers of time, place and manner was not prepared, and the teacher was not only displeased but also saddened. The teacher’s sadness touched Seryozha. He did not feel himself to blame for not having learned the lesson; but try as he might, he was quite unable to do it: while the teacher was explaining it to him, he believed and seemed to understand, but once he was on his own, he was simply unable to remember and understand that such a short and clear word as ‘thus’ was
He chose a moment when the teacher was silently looking in the book.
‘Mikhail Ivanych, when is your name-day?’ he asked suddenly.
‘You’d better think about your work. Name-days mean nothing to intelligent beings. Just like any other day when we have to work.’
Seryozha looked attentively at the teacher, his sparse little beard, his spectacles which had slipped down below the red mark on his nose, and lapsed into thought so that he heard nothing of what his teacher explained to him. He realized that his teacher was not thinking about what he said, he felt it by the tone in which it was spoken. ‘But why have they all decided to say it in the same way, everything that’s most boring and unnecessary? Why does he push me away from him? Why doesn’t he love me?’ he asked himself with sorrow, and could think of no answer.
XXVII
After the teacher there was a lesson with his father. Waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the desk playing with his penknife and began to think. Among his favourite occupations was looking for his mother during his walk. He did not believe in death generally and especially not in her death, though Lydia Ivanovna had told him and his father had confirmed it, and therefore, even after he was told that she was dead, he looked for her during his walks. Any full-bodied, graceful woman with dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman, a feeling of tenderness welled up in his soul, so strong that he choked and tears came to his eyes. And he expected her to come up to him at any moment and lift her veil. Her whole face would be visible, she would smile, embrace him, he would smell her smell, feel the tenderness of her hand, and weep happily, as he had one evening when he lay at her feet and she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white hand with its rings. Later, when he learned by chance from the nanny that his mother was not dead, and his father and Lydia Ivanovna explained to him that she was dead for him, because she was not good (which he simply could not believe, because he loved her), he kept looking and waiting for her in the same way. Today in the Summer Garden there was a lady in a purple veil whom he watched with a sinking heart, expecting it to be her as she approached them on the path. This lady did not reach them but disappeared somewhere. Today Seryozha felt stronger surges of love for her than ever, and now, forgetting himself, while waiting for his father, he cut up the whole edge of the desk with his knife, staring straight ahead with shining eyes and thinking of her.
‘Papa is coming!’ Vassily Lukich distracted him.
Seryozha jumped up, approached his father and, after kissing his hand, looked at him attentively, searching for signs of joy at getting the Alexander Nevsky.
‘Did you have a nice walk?’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, sitting down in his armchair, moving the book of the Old Testament to him and opening it. Though Alexei Alexandrovich had told Seryozha many times that every Christian must have a firm knowledge of sacred history, he often consulted the Old Testament himself, and Seryozha noticed it.
‘Yes, it was great fun, papa,’ said Seryozha, sitting sideways on the chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. ‘I saw Nadenka’ (Nadenka was Lydia Ivanovna’s niece, whom she was bringing up). ‘She told me you’ve been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?’
