The Russian Century

by George Pahomov

  “I’ve forgiven her without it,” she said, ready to cry. But my father, who had tuned himself up to a high key and convinced himself that he was behaving in accordance with the precepts of strict justice, only shouted at her. “Get moving, you little fool, and don’t stick your nose into other people’s business! It’s not for you that this is being done. If I had been guilty toward you—do you understand me? I myself, your master—then I, too, would have

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  to kiss your hand. You can’t understand that? Then hold your tongue and be quiet!”

  The cowering Feklusha did not dare interpose any further objections. With her whole body shaking in terror, she went and stood in her place, awaiting her fate as if she had been the guilty one.

  White as linen, Maria Vasilievna made her way through the crowd which parted before her. She walked mechanically, as if in her sleep. But her face was so rigid and angry that it was awful to look at her. Her lips were bloodless and convulsively pressed together. She came up very close to Feklusha. The words, “Forgive me!” tore from her lips in a kind of sickly scream. She grabbed Feklusha’s hand and brought it to her lips so violently and with a look of such hatred that it seemed as though she wanted to bite it.

  Suddenly a convulsion twisted her face and foam appeared at the corners of her mouth. With her whole body writhing, she fell on the ground and began screaming with piercing, inhuman shrieks.

  It was discovered later that she had been subject to these nervous attacks— a form of epilepsy—even before that. But she had carefully concealed this fact from her masters, fearing that they would dismiss her if they found out. Those of the servants who knew about her disease kept their silence out of a feeling of solidarity.

  I cannot convey the effect her seizure had on those present. It goes without saying that we children were hastily taken away. We were so terrified that we were close to hysterics ourselves. But even more vividly I remember the sudden shift which took place in the mood of all our household servants. Up to that time they had behaved toward Maria Vasilievna with anger and hatred. Her act seemed so vile and low that each one derived a certain pleasure from showing her his contempt, from spiting her in some way.

  But now all that was changed suddenly. She had unexpectedly appeared in the role of suffering victim, and popular sympathy shifted over to her side. Among the servants there was even a repressed protest against my father for the excessive severity of his punishment.

  “Of course she was wrong to do what she did,” the housemaids would say in undertones when they gathered in our nursery to confer with Nanny, as was their habit after every important event. “Well all right then, so the general could have given her a good tongue lashing, the mistress could have punished her herself, the way it’s done in other houses. That doesn’t hurt so much, you can bear it. But now, all of a sudden, see what they thought up! To go and kiss the hand of such a little cricket, such a snotnose as Feklusha, right in front of everybody! Who could stand such an insult!”

  Maria Vasilievna did not regain consciousness for a long time. Her seizures recurred again and again over an interval of several hours. She would blink,

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  become conscious for a moment and then suddenly start thrashing around and screaming again. The doctor had to be called from town.

  With each passing minute, sympathy for the patient increased and indignation against the masters grew. I remember my mother coming into the nursery in the middle of the day. Seeing Nanny brewing tea with a good deal of fuss and concern at that unusual hour, she asked quite innocently, “For whom are you doing this, Nanny?”

  “For Maria Vasilievna, naturally! What do you think—is it your opinion that she, a sick woman, should be left without tea? We servants, we still have a Christian heart!” Nanny replied, in such a coarse and challenging tone of voice that my mother grew quite embarrassed and hurried away.

  And yet a few hours earlier, that very same Nanny, if she had been given her way, would have been capable of beating Maria Vasilievna half to death. The seamstress recovered within a few days, to my parents’ great joy. She took up her life in the house just as before. No one mentioned what had taken place. I believe that even among the servants there was no one who would have reproached her for the past.

  But as for me, from that day on I felt a strange pity for her, mixed with an instinctive horror. I no longer ran to her room as I used to do. If I met her in the hall I couldn’t keep from pressing myself against the wall, and I tried not to look at her. I kept imagining that she would fall on the floor right then and there and start thrashing and screaming.

  Maria Vasilievna must have been aware of my alienation from her, and she tried to win back my old affection by various means. I remember that almost every day she would think up different little surprises for me: now she would bring me colored scraps of cloth, now she would sew a new dress for my doll. But none of this helped. The feeling of secret terror would not pass, and I ran away the moment I found myself alone with her. And soon after that, I came under the supervision of my new governess, who put a stop to all my friendly relations with the servants.

  But I vividly recall the following scene. I was already seven or eight years old. One evening, the night before some holiday—the Annunciation [25 March], perhaps—I was running down the hall past Maria Vasilievna’s room. Suddenly she looked out and called to me.

  “Young lady, young lady! Come in and see me. Look what a lovely lark I baked for you out of dough!”

  It was half dark in the long hall, and no one was there but Maria Vasilievna and myself. Looking at her white face with its great, dark eyes, I suddenly felt an eerie sensation. Instead of answering her, I dashed away headlong.

  She called after me. “What is it, young lady? I can see that you don’t like me at all any more. I disgust you!”

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  It wasn’t so much her words as the tone of voice in which she said them that shook me. I didn’t stop, but kept on running. But then, on returning to the classroom and calming down after my fright, I couldn’t forget the sound of that voice—hollow, despondent.

  I was not myself all evening. No matter how I tried to suppress the unpleasant gnawing sensation inside of me by playing, by prankishness, I couldn’t make the feeling go away. The thought of Maria Vasilievna wouldn’t leave my mind. And, as always happens with a person one hurts, she suddenly seemed terribly nice to me, and I began to feel drawn to her.

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell my governess what had happened. Children are always embarrassed to talk about their feelings. Moreover, since we were forbidden to fraternize with the servants, I knew that the governess would in all likelihood praise me for my behavior. And yet I felt with every instinct that there was nothing praiseworthy about it.

  After evening tea, when it was time for me to go to bed, I decided to drop in to see Maria Vasilievna instead of going straight to my room. This was a kind of sacrifice on my part, for it meant running alone down a long, deserted, and by now quite dark hall which I always feared and avoided in the evening. But now a desperate bravery came to the fore. I ran without stopping to take a breath. Puffing and panting, I tore into her room like a hurricane.

  Maria Vasilievna had already had her supper. Because of the holiday, she wasn’t working but sitting at the table, covered with a clean white cloth, and reading some religious book. The lamp glimmered in front of the icons. After the frightening dark hall, the little room seemed uncommonly light and cozy, and Maria Vasilievna herself so kind and good!

  “I came to ask you to forgive me dear, dear Maria Vasilievna!” I said in one breath. Before I could finish, she had already grabbed me and started covering me with kisses. She kissed me so violently and for such a long time that I felt the eerie sensation once more. I was already trying to figure out how to get out of her grasp without offending her
again, when a cruel attack of coughing forced her to release me from her embrace at last.

  This dreadful cough tormented her more and more. “I barked like a dog all night,” she would say of herself, with a kind of sullen irony.

  With each day that passed she grew paler and more withdrawn, but she stubbornly resisted all my mother’s suggestions that she consult a doctor. She even showed an angry irritation when anyone mentioned her illness. In this way, she dragged out another two or three years. She was on her feet almost to the end. She went to bed only a few days before she died; and her final hours, they said, were horribly painful.

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  My father ordered a very opulent funeral (by village standards) to be arranged for her. Not only all the servants, but all our family attended it as well, even the master himself. Feklusha, too, walked behind the coffin and sobbed bitterly. The only one missing was Filip Matveevich. He did not wait for her to die. He had left us a few months earlier for another and better-paying job, somewhere in the vicinity of Dinaburg.

  Chapter Four

  Oleg Pantiukhov, A Student’s Summer

  Ivan Bunin, Nobel laureate in literature, once wrote: “Our children and grandchildren will be unable to comprehend that Russia in which we once . . . lived, which we appreciated, failed to understand; all that might, complexity, wealth, and happiness.” True or not, our understanding of that Russia is made substantially richer and clearer by the memoirs of Oleg Pantiukhov: Schooling. The cadet corps. Exams. Trips abroad. The Caucasus. Correspondence with parents. A visit to the monasteries on Solovki. The centennial celebrations of Pushkin’s birth. Through all these descriptions we gain insight into distant values and sensibilities. Taken from Oleg Pantiukhov, O dniakh bylykh [Of By-gone Days]. Maplewood, N.J.: Durand Press, 1969.

  Our Pushkin Troop, named in honor of the poet, decided to go hiking in the mountains after summer camp was over. The so-called “camp” did not provide us with hardship and adventure. The desire to be active in nature in the way that Baden-Powell would later recommend, but in our own simpler, Russian way, had been in us long before the appearance of the Boy Scouts. Our Pushkin Troop had rules of honor and friendship which were strictly followed even though they were not written. There was also the hope of being helpful to our country and countrymen. Our group was morally different from our environment.

  We studied a map of the Caucasus Mountains for a long time and finally chose the itinerary which I had suggested. Suram–Kutaisi– Abastuman–Borzhomi. Because Suram and Borzhomi were very close to each other, the route resembled a triangle with legs of 70 kilometers.

  It was a wonderful plan. We would see the famous Suram tunnel, the manganese mines at Chiatur, ancient monasteries, and cross the wild, desolate

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  pass at Zekar. It felt good to plan the hike and from that point even the camp took on more meaning. I recall that I had taken from home a bar of bird-cherry scented soap. It was cheap, but its aroma seemed heavenly and inspiring when it mingled with the morning scent of pines which were all around us.

  It did seem to me that the last summer in Tbilisi ought to be spent with my parents. But even my parents agreed that we had to bid a proper farewell to the magnificent Caucasus which had sheltered us for the past twelve years.

  We had parceled out our provisions and equipment among the hikers. Finally the awaited day came, and we were all seated in the coach of the evening train. We somehow managed to sleep on the hard benches and in the morning got off at Suram where we found a faucet and washed out in the open. Then we bought chureks of bread and set off westward along the railroad right-of-way. The railroad dove into the darkness of the tunnel but we followed the old abandoned line over the mountains. We stopped to light a campfire and make tea. I was overwhelmed by a mass of new impressions. We continued along the railroad ties thinking of the people who rode past that very spot in comfort. How diverse they must have been: some pleased and happy, others bored and lonely, but none of them seeing the beauty of the mountains beyond the railroad cars. All kinds of thoughts come when you hike along the ties.

  We spent the nights around a campfire underneath a clear sky. When it was my turn to cook, I poured buckwheat groats into a pot of water, added salt, diced some smoked Ukrainian fatback and cooked everything over the fire. Before eating we added chopped onion and pepper. I was proud of my glorious Ukrainian mulligan stew. The boys even sang a Ukrainian song in my honor. We would take turns standing watch at night passing a revolver to each other. That was our only weapon. For the sake of security, we invented a story to tell inquisitive natives that we were the vanguard of a large body of troops which followed behind.

  In Kutaisi we rested at the home of one of the hikers whose name was Gorokh. We visited very ancient Georgian monasteries. In one of them we were shown the extraordinarily large ring of [the Georgian] King David. There were stone walls clinging to cliffs over abysses and, as elsewhere in the southern Caucasus, palaces of Queen Tamara. In Kutaisi we counted up our money and decided to ride to Kobulety to see the Black Sea. It was a perfectly understandable desire: none of us had ever seen the sea.

  We sensed its close presence later in the evening twilight as we strode on deep gravel smelling the sea, breathing it, hearing it, but not seeing it. And we could not see it for a long time until we came right up to it and even then could not discern it nor understand that the foam and the rush was the Black

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  Sea itself. In the darkness, the noise, the rumbling and surging, we could not tell where the sea began or ended, especially since we stood at a decent distance trying to keep our hiking boots dry.

  Razgil’daev’s relatives, with their constant banal chatter, also kept us from fathoming the sea. It was especially pointless since we could not hear what they were saying anyway. The gravel, churned by waves, made much noise. The moment it piled up in one place, some angry being would gather it all up and fling it back. And each time it was several wagon loads of well-washed multicolored stones.

  We slowly got our bearings in this muddle and began to distinguish the pattern by which the azure-green, glassy water would gather into a wave, rise higher and higher and explode in watery fireworks. One could easily “get high” on this. Our new acquaintances, Razgil’daev’s relatives, had to understand why we did not answer their questions and stood staring into the grayish-green mist.

  In the morning before returning to Kutaisi we again came to the sea and saw that it had limits, although they were very foggy, indeterminate, and far beyond the horizon. We saw the waves glistening so brightly in the sun that our eyes hurt and that the foam resembled fanciful lace. Especially incised in memory was the translucent, glassy color of the waves and the unusual, “heavenly” purity of the whole watery mass.

  Then we rode back scrutinizing the colorful garb of the natives and their fragile huts erected on stilts. Our toughest crossing was from Kutaisi to Abas-tuman—but what wild, primeval gulfs, what forests, what wilderness. When we spent a night near a roaring mountain stream the darkness was so thick you could not see your hand in front of your face. Our campfire cast light only as far as the nearest trees. Anyone could have crept up to our bivouac without any difficulty. But of course there was no one: only the sounds of wild animals from the dense forest. This was the most nerve-wracking night of our expedition.

  The whole crossing was tiring. We were short of bread. The hard, yellow, unsalted cornpone which we bought at occasional villages was inedible. Worn-out and famished we climbed the pass, entering a realm of clouds and fog where nothing was visible except for patches of white hiding in the trees. There wasn’t a soul for tens of kilometers. As it began to grow dark and the unpleasant thought of spending the night amidst clouds entered our minds, we suddenly heard pure Russian speech. It seemed to us fairy-tale sorcery or a hallucination, but then we saw the foggy outlines of
buildings, either native huts or Russian log cabins. It was an outpost of a Cossack regiment on duty in Abastuman where the crown prince was in residence. What dear, Russian faces, what rollicking, expansive songs, what good-natured jokes, what tasty

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  borshch and what blessed sleep on hay among your own people. That was our best night.

  After that it was easier, mostly downhill. We spent a night in the outskirts of Abastuman at some lumber mill. It was worse than uncomfortable. The boards cut into my side and I dreamt that I was the dying soldier impaled on the rocks in Lermontov’s “A Vale in Dagestan,” left behind by my buddies. In my sleep I tried to scream to call them back and woke up.

  Abastuman was attractive but different from Borzhomi. There were no natural springs, but the air was permeated with the scent of pine resin, very sweet air, and there was also the presence of the crown prince. It was said that the crown prince, Grand Duke Georgii Aleksandrovich, lived very modestly, unlike his brother in Borzhomi. It was said that the crown prince was a very likable young man. [He was a younger brother of Emperor Nicholas II and was next in succession until the birth of Nicholas’ son, Alexis.]

  We were approaching the end of our expedition, walking past Akhalpikh through a bare, sun-scorched plateau. The sun was rising. An old Turk on horseback stopped, faced the sun and covered his face with his palms. It must be that Mohammed and his followers were exquisitely sensitive to the beauty of sunrise. Our thoughts at the rising of the sun do not go past the mundane, but here, in a small village, a mullah atop a minaret fervidly sang praise and gratitude to the Creator.