Novels, Tales, Journeys полностью

While my mother was still pregnant with me, I was already enlisted as a sergeant in the Semyonovsky regiment,3 through the graces of Prince B., a major of the guards and our close relative. If, against all expectations, my mother had given birth to a girl, my father would have informed the proper authorities of the death of the non-reporting sergeant, and the matter would have ended there. I was considered on leave until I finished my studies. Back then we were not educated as nowadays. At the age of five I was put into the hands of the groom Savelyich, who for his sober behavior was accorded the honor of being my attendant. Under his supervision, by the age of twelve I had learned to read and write in Russian and was a very sound judge of the qualities of the male borzoi. At that time father hired a French tutor for me, Monsieur Beaupré, whom he ordered from Moscow together with a year’s supply of wine and olive oil. His arrival greatly displeased Savelyich. “Thank God,” he grumbled to himself, “it seems the little one’s washed, combed, and fed. Why go spending extra money hiring a moosieu, as if his own people weren’t enough!”

In his own country, Beaupré had been a hairdresser, then in Prussia a soldier, then he came to Russia pour être outchitel,^*1 not understanding very well the meaning of the word. He was a nice fellow, but flighty and extremely dissipated. His main weakness was a passion for the fair sex; not infrequently he received kicks for his tender advances, which left him groaning for whole days. What’s more, he was (to use his own expression) “no enemy of the bottle,” that is (in Russian) he liked to take a drop too much. But since in our house wine was only served with dinner, and by the glass at that, the tutor usually being passed over, my Beaupré very quickly accustomed himself to Russian liqueurs and even came to prefer them to the wines of his own country, as incomparably more wholesome for the stomach. We hit it off at once, and though by contract he was supposed to teach me “in French, in German, and all the subjects,” he preferred to pick up some Russian chatter from me—and then each of us minded his own business. We lived in perfect harmony. I wished for no other mentor. But fate soon parted us, and here is how it happened.

The laundress Palashka, a fat and pockmarked wench, and the one-eyed milkmaid Akulka decided one day to throw themselves at my mother’s feet together, confessing to a criminal weakness and tearfully complaining about the moosieu who had seduced their inexperience. Mother did not take such things lightly and complained to my father. His justice was summary. He sent for the French rascal at once. He was informed that moosieu was giving me a lesson. Father went to my room. Just then Beaupré was lying on the bed sleeping the sleep of the innocent. I was busy with my own things. It should be mentioned that a geographical map had been ordered for me from Moscow. It hung quite uselessly on the wall, and the size and quality of the paper had long been tempting me. I decided to make a kite out of it and, taking advantage of Beaupré’s sleep, set to work. Father walked in just as I was attaching a bast tail to the Cape of Good Hope. Seeing my exercises in geography, my father yanked my ear, then ran over to Beaupré, woke him up quite unceremoniously, and began to shower him with reproaches. In his confusion Beaupré tried to get up but could not: the unfortunate Frenchman was dead drunk. Seven ills, one cure. Father picked him up from the bed by the scruff of the neck, pushed him out the door, and drove him off the premises that same day, to the indescribable joy of Savelyich. And that was the end of my education.

I lived as a young dunce, chasing pigeons and playing leapfrog with the servants’ kids. Meanwhile I turned sixteen. Here my fate changed.

One autumn day mother was cooking honey preserve in the drawing room, while I, licking my lips, kept my eyes on the boiling scum. Father sat by the window reading the Court Almanac, which he received every year. This book always had a strong effect on him: he could never read it without special concern, and this reading always caused an extraordinary stirring of the bile in him. Mother, who knew all his ways and displays by heart, always tried to tuck the wretched book as far away as possible, and thus the Court Almanac sometimes did not catch his eye for whole months. But then, when he chanced to find it, for whole hours he would not let it out of his hands. And so, father was reading the Court Almanac, shrugging from time to time and repeating under his breath: “Lieutenant general!…He was a sergeant in my company!…A chevalier of both Russian orders!…Was it so long ago that we…” Finally, father flung the almanac onto the sofa and sank into a brooding that boded no good.

Suddenly he turned to mother: “Avdotya Vasilyevna, how old is Petrusha?”