The Angel

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 51 (Supplement)

The Angel

A Russian School Tale.

By LEOND ANDRYEV.

HERE were moments when I Sashka would have liked tc make an end of what we commonly call life. His i imagination tried to comI jure up images of what it ! would be like not to have to rise early in the morning, nor to wash in icy-cold water, nor tc go to the school and be frequently scolded there, nor to endure the pain in his back and in every limb when his mother, as a punishment, made him kneel for a whole evening. But being only thirteen, and ignorant of the means by which people cease to exist when they no longer wish to, he continued being scolded at school and kneeling at home, and it seemed to him that life was without end. One year would go by and another and another, and he would still-.be going to school, still doing all the things he hated. And, being possessed of an indomitable spirit, Sashka did not take to adversity kindly, but revenged himself on the world at large, abusing his. schoolfellows, being rude to his principals, destroying his text-books, lying to his masters, to his mother, to everyone. To his father only, he did not lie. If during a fight some boy chanced to make his nose bleed, he would purposely besmear himself with the blood so as to make the damage appear worse than it really was, and without so much as a tear in his eye would howl at the top of his voice in such a piercing, unpleasant manner as to compel all those around to stop up their ears. When he felt he had cried enough he would stop suddenly, put out his tongue, then take to drawing caricatures of himself yelling at the masters with their fingers stuffed in their ears, and the unfortunate victor and his companions Standing by, trembling with fear. All his exercise books were filled with caricatures, the most common among them representing a fat little woman striking a tiny boy, who was as thin as a match, with a huge rolling-pin. Beneath in large crooked letters were written the words: “Say you are «sorry, you brute!” “I sha’n’t, not if you burst.” Towards the end of the Christmas term Sashka was expelled from school, and when his mother attempted to .strike him he retaliated by biting her finger. This act brought him his freedom. He gave up washing in the morning, ran about the streets all day, amused himself by fighting other boys; was afraid of nothing, excepting hunger, for his mother no longer provided him with food; it was only his father who saved him crusts of bread and scraps of potatoes. Under these conditions Sashka began to find life possible. It was Friday, Christmas Eve. Sashka had been playing with the other boys, until one by one they had departed to their various homes, and the frozen little rusty gate had creaked after the last of them. It was getting dark. A grey, snowy mist was rising from the field opposite; a steady reddish light appeared in the dark little building at the end of the street. It grew colder. When Sashka approached the circle of light round the street lamp he could see tiny snowflakes swirling in the air. It was time to go home. “Why so late, you brute?” his mother greeted him, shaking a first but not daring to strike. Her sleeves were rolled up; great beads of perspiration stood on her big bare arms and on her flat, browless face. As Sashka passed her, a familiar smell of vodka reached him. The mother scratched her head with her dirty finger nails, and as there was no time for scolding she spat on the ground. “Statistics, to be sure 1” she hurled after him. Sashka sniffed disdainfully as he disappeared behind the thin wooden partition whence his father, Ivan Savitch, could be heard breathing heavily. Shivering with cold, he was sitting on the stove-settle with his hands tucked under him, trying to warm himself. “Sashka, the Svetchnikovs have invited you to their Christmas party,” he whispered, as the boy entered. “Their maid came for you some time . ago.” “Really?” Sashka asked dubiously. “Why, of course. The old hag won’t tell you. but she got your coat ready/’ “You are not telling me a lie, are you?” Sashka asked again, his surprise increasing, for the rich Svetchnikovs, who paid for his schooling, had forbidden him their house after his expulsion. Again receiving his father’s assurances, Sashka grew thoughtful. “Well, why don’t you get up? Why are you sitting there?” he exclaimed presently, jumping about on the stove settle, and then added: “I won’t go to those devils, so there! The pigs would die if they saw me again. ‘Wicked boy!”’ he mimicked through his nose. “Nobody is good but themselves, the > blockheads!” “Oh, Sashka, Sashka! You will come to a bad end.” “And what about you?” Sashka reported roughly. “You should not talk, you old stick-in-the-mud. Why, you are afraid of a woman!” The father trembled, but made no reply. A faint light, that crept through the aperture between the top of the partition and the ceiling, shone on his high forehead, accentuating the deep, dark hollows round his eyes. There was a time when Ivan Savitch used to drink heavily, and his wife feared and hated him; but when, however, he began spitting blood and gave up vodka, she took to it in her turn. She paid back with interest all that she had suffered at the hands of the narrow-chested man whom she did not understand. Who had been dismissed from his post

for his drunken, refractory habits, and filled the house with proud, impossible, long-haired fellows like himself. Unlike her husband, drink seemed to agree with her; she grew daily stronger, and her fists became heavier. She would speak her mind freely now, invite home the kind of people she liked, with whom she would sing rowdy songs at the top of her voice, while her husband lay behind the partition, shivering with the cold that would never leave him, and contemplating the horror and injustice of human life. And to whomever Ivan Savitch’s wife chanced to gossip for a while, she complained that she possessed no worse enemies in the world than her own husband and son, both insufferably proud of their book learning. “But I say you will go!” the mother said to Sashka after an hour had gone by, and at every word she banged her fist on the table, making the dirty glasses dance and clink against each other. “And I say I will not go!” Sashka replied callously. The corners of his mouth twitched from a desire to show his teeth. At school this characteristic had gained him the nickname of “Wolf’s Cub.” ■ “I’ll beat you black and blue,” the mother shouted. “Do!” To beat a boy who had taken to biting her was no longer possible, to turn him out of doors was worse than useless, as she knew that he would sooner starve than go to the Svetchnikovs, so she appealed to her husband’s authority. “A pretty kind of father, to be sure, to let the boy treat me like this!” “Do go, Sashka!” came appealingly from the stove settle. “The Svetchnikovs are good-natured folk; they might make tilings right for you again.” Sashka smiled contemptuously. Long, long ago, before lie was born, his father had been tutor to the Svetchnikovs, and to this day considered them the kindest of people. It was before his drinking days, when he was still the county statistician. He had lost touch with them after bis hasty marriage with his landlady’s daughter, who was on the eve of giving birth to his child. From that time he began going down hill, until at last he was picked up drunk in the streets and carried to the police station. The Svetchnikovs, however, kept on helping him financially, and Kioktista Petrovna, Ivan Savitch’s wife, though she hated them as she did books, and everything else connected with her husband's past life, was nevertheless proud of knowing them, and would boast of the acquaintanceship a good deal to her friends. “You might perhaps bring me something from the tree.” the father ventured. Sashka knew that this remark was merely thrown out as a bait, and despised his father for his weakness. But he really was anxious to bring back something for the poor invalid; it was so long since he had smoked any decent tobacco. “All right,” he said. “Give me my coat! Have you sewn on the'buttons? I daresay you’ve forgotten.” # * * The children, not yet allowed into the drawing-room to see the tree, were all in the nursery chatting together. Sashka listened to their innocent prattle with a look of disdain, while his hands, in his trouser pockets, were busy toying with the already halfcrumbled cigarettes he had managed to steal from his host's s'ndy. Kolya, the youngest Svetchnikov, came up- and stopped near him with a look of dismay. His feet were turned inwards, and a forefinger was placed at the corner of his mouth. It was barely six months since he had been broken-of the habit of putting his finger in his mouth. He had very fair hair, cut in a straight fringe over his forehead, corkscrew curls hanging down his back, and large questioning blue eyes; exactly the kind of boy Sashka enjoyed teasing. “Are you an ungrateful boy?” Kolya asked. “Miss said you were. I am a dood boy.” “Of course you are!” Sashka replied, glancing at Kolya’s little velvet knickers and large turn-down collar. “Would you like my dun? There, take it!” Sashka held out his hand. The gun had a piece of cork attached to the nozzle, which he placed against the unsuspecting Kolya’s nose and then pulled the catch. The cork struck the boy’s nose, then dropped, dangling by its string. Kolya’s blue eyes filled with tears, and his finger flew from his mouth to his reddened nose. “B . . bad . . bad boy!” he stammered. The door opened and a beautiful woman entered the room. Her hair was brushed smoothly back, and covered part’of her ears. ' It. was Madame Svetchnikov’s sister, the lady to whom at'one time Sashka’s father liad been tutor. “This is the hoy,” she was saying to a bald-headed man who accompanied

her, indicating Sashka. “Why don’t you bow, Sashka? You must learn to be polite!” But Sashka bowed neither to the lady nor to her bald friend. He knew a good deal more than the lady suspected. He knew his poor father once loved her, and that she had married another. And though this marriage had not taken place until after his father’s, still, Sashka could not forgive her for her supposed’s infidelity. “He comes from a bad stock,” Sophia Dmitrievna was saying with a sigh, “but couldn’t you do something for him, Platon Michailovitch? My husband thinks a workshop would be more suitable for him than school. Would you like to go into a workshop, Sdshka?”

“No!” was Sashka’s curt reply, his ears catching the word “husband.” “Would you like to be a shepherd?” the bald man asked. “No, I wouldn’t!” Sashka persisted. “What would you like to be, then?” Sashka did not know.

The bald man looked the strange boy up and down in perplexity. When he raised his eyes from his patched boots to his face Sashka put out his tongue and drew it in again so quickly that Sophia Dmitrievna, who had not noticed it, was unable to account for the old man’s sudden irritability. “I want to go into a workshop,” Sashka said meekly. The beautiful lady looked pleased. She sighed, thinking of the power one can exercise over others through love and kindness. “I don’t know if I can find a vacancy,” the old man said, trying to avoid Sashka’s eye, and passing his hand over the short hair at the back of. his neck. “However, we will see what can be done.” The children were growing restless and impatient to see the Christmas tree. Both by virtue of his size and reputation for wickedness Sashka's trick with the gun became quite popular, and not a few red little noses could be seen among them. The little girls laughed and clapped their hands with glee as each little knight, disdaining to show the fear he felt, stood blinking while he waited for lhe blow of the cork.

Soon the door opened, and a voice was heard: “Come along, children! Gently, gently!” Their eyes opened large with wonder as two by two the children trooped into the brilliantly-lighted room, and

walked quietly around the glittering tree. It cast a bright, even light over their faces, their round eyes, and rosy lips. For the space of a minute an enchanted stillness pervaded the room, to be immediately broken by a chorus of triumphant shouts. One little girl, quite unable to contain her joy, kept jumping up and down on the same spot, her little plait, tied with a blue ribbon, bobbing about behind her.

Sashka was sad and sullen. A feeling that foreboded ill oppressed his wounded little heart. The tree seemed to blind him by its beauty and the garish brilliance of its countless candles. The sight was strange to him—unfriendly—like the crowd of clean, pretty children dancing around it. He would have liked to knock it over, so that it fell on their fair little heads. He felt as if two hands were clutching at his heart and squeezing the last drop of blood out of it. Taking refuge in a corner behind the piano, he sat there, his hand in his pocket, unconsciously crumbling the last of the stolen cigarettes. He, too, had a father, a mother, and a home he thought, and yet he felt himself utterly forlorn. To regain his courage he began thinking of his penknife, a treasure he had recently acquired in exchange for something else, but it seemed very insignificant to him now with its half-broken yellow bone handle. To-morrow he would break it, and then there would bo nothing loft. -Suddenly, Sashka’s narrow eyes glistened, his face lighted up with wonder, then instantly assumed its usual expression of defiance. On the side of the tree facing him. which was not so well illuminated as the rest, he

caught sight of an object that seemed to have no place in the scheme of his existence, but without which everything in the room was so void and meaningless as to make the people about him appear hardly real. The object was . little angel of wax, suspended carelessly among the thick, dark foliage, and looking as if it floated in mid-air. Its gossamer wings shimmered in the light; it seemed so real as if ready to fly . way. Its delicate pink little hands were stretched upwards, .nd so was the little head with the hair that suggested Kolya’s. There was something in its face, too. that resembled Kolya, though it possessed a quality that Kolya’s face lacked, as did the faces of all the other people about it. The angel’s face did not shine with joy, nor was it overcast with sorrow; it bore an expression that cannot be conveyed in words, cannot be grasped in thought, but can only be comprehended by a feeling such as prompted it. Sashka was unconscious of the power that drew him towards the angel, but it seemed that he had always known and loved it—loved it more than his penknife, more than his father, more than •inything else in the world. Perplexed, agitated, and filled with an incomprehensible joy, Sashka put his hands over his heart and whispered : “Dear . . dear angel!” The uore he gazed at it, the more wonderful the angel’s expression became. It seemed so far, far away, so unlike anything that surrounded him. It would have been almost a sacrilege to touch its delicate wings. “Dear. . . dear . . .” Sashka whispered, His head was on fire. 'With hands elapsed behind him and stealthy step he walked about, ready for mortal coinbat in defence of the angel. He kept his gaze averted Goin the beloved object so as not to attract the attention of the others towards it, but he felt that it was still there, knew that it had not yet flown away. The hostess appeared in the doorway. The delighted children immediately surrounded her; the little girl with the plait and blue ribbon stood by, blinking her sleepy eyes. Sashka, too, came up. A lump rose in his throat.

“Auntie . . . Ajnntie . . ” lie began, and in trying to give a soft tone to his voice he made it sound even harsher than it usually was. “A . . . Auntie

The hostess did not hear him, and Sashka tugged at her dross impatient-

“What do you want? Why do you pull my dress? You must really learn better manners!” “A . . . Auntie . . . Give me one thing from the tree . . . the angel.” “I can’t,” the hostess replied coldly. “The tree must not be touched till New Year’s Eve. And really, you are no longer a little boy, and can call me by my name—Maria Dmitrievna.” Sashka felt as though he were falling down an abyss, and clutched at the last straw to save himself.

“I am sorry ... I will try and learn better,” he muttered. But the words that had produced such a magic effect on his masters failed to touch the old lady.

“I am glad to hear it, my dear,” she said indifferently. “Give me the angel!” Sashka demanded loughly. “It is impossible,” the hostess replied; "don’t you understand?” But Sashka did not understand, and when she turned towards the door he followed her, gazing aimlessly at her black, rustling dress. In his over-ex-cited brain a recollection arose of how a boy in his form had once asked the master to let him have the troika, and on being refused had fallen on his knees, put up his hands, and burst into tears. The master had been furious, but the boy had gained his end. At the time, Sashka had immortalised the episode in caricature, but now the boy’s act appeared to him as a possible means by which he might gain his own end,, lie tugged at the old lady’s dress, and when she turned towards him he fell clumsily on his knees and put up his hands in supplication. Do what he would, however, the tears refused to come.

“Are you mad!” the hostess exclaimed, easting an anxious look around. Fortunately there was no one else in the room. “What is the matter with you?” On his knees, with hands clasped together, Sashka gave her a look of hatred and demanded rudely: “Give me the angel!”

There was an evil light in his eyes as he fixed them on the old lady, ready to catch the first word that should form on her lips. “Very well, I will give it to you,” she aded hastily. “But what an absurd boy you are! Of course, you shall have the angel if yon want it so badly, but why couldn’t you wait until New Year? Come, get up! You must never,” she went on admonishingly. “go down on your knees. It is not fitting for the dignity of a human being. You should only kneel before God.”

“You can talk as much as you like,” Sashka thought, and in his effort to get ahead of her he trod on the old lady’s skirt.

When the hostess took the toy from the tree Sashka devoured it with his eyes. His hands kept opening and shutting nervously in his fear that she might break it. “What a pretty thing!” the old lady said, with a feeling of compassion for the delicate, costly toy. “I wonder who put it here? And what do you want it for, pray? You are such a big boy! What good will it be to you? Look, here are some picture books instead; I promised to give this to Kolya.” The latter was added on the spur of the moment. Sashka’s torment grew so unbearable that he almost ground his teeth with rage. To avoid a scene the hostess handed him the toy. “There, take it!” she said, with displeasure. “What an obstinate boy, to be sure!”

The hands that took the toy were as tense as two steel springs, and yet so soft and gentle that the angel might have been floating in air. “Ah!” a long-drawn sigh escaped Sashka. Two tiny tears appeared in his eyes—tears that were not accustomed to the light. He did not take his eyes off the hostess as he drew the angel slowly to his breast; but kept gazing at her with a soft, gentle smile. He trembled with a feeling of supernatural joy. It seemed as though when the angel’s delicate wings should touch Sashka’s sunken chest something wonderful would happen—something so bright and glorious a j had never yet taken place on this sad, sinful earth of ours. “Ah!” another sigh escaped him when the little wings came in contact with his breast. His face shone brighter than the decorated tree with the garish light of its many candles. The old lady smiled; the bald-headed man’s impassive face twitched nervously; the children were hushed into silence, touched by the sight of so much joy. In that short moment all noticed the absurd likeness between the clumsy schoolboy in clothes that had grown too small for him and rhe face of the angel, the work of an inspired artist’s hand. Suddenly an unpleasant change came over the scenp. Sashka drew himself together like a panther preparing for a spring. He cast a black look around as though defying anyone who might dare to take his treasure from him.

“I am going home,” he said abruptly, elbowing his way through, the crowd, "home to my father.”

His mother was alseep, tired out with the day’s work and heavy with drink. In the little room behind the partition a small kitchen lamp stood on the table, and its faint yellow light that penetrated with difficulty through the smoky chimney cast strange shadows on the faces of father and son. “What do you think of it?” Sashka asked in a whisper, holding the angel away from his father so that he should no touch it, “Wonderful!” the father said softly, gazing pensively at the toy. His face bore the same tense, joyous expression as Kolya’s. “It looks just as if it would fly away,” he continued. “I know!” Sasha said proudly. “You don't think I am blind, do you? Just look at the wings! Mind! don't touch!”

The father drew back his outstretched hand, while his eyes took in every detail of the toy. “What a bad habit you have of clutching at everything!” Sashka remonstrated in a whisper. “You might have broken it!”

The distorted shadows of two bended heads were thrown on the wall—the one large and shaggy, the other round and small. Strange, agonising, yet not unpleasant thoughts began to take shape in the larger head. Under the fixed rtare of the wide-open eyes the angel grew brighter, and wings seemed to flutter silently, and all around, the dark beams, the dirty tabla, Sashka —everything, mingled into a greyness that had neither light nor shade. It seemed to the doomed man as if a plaintive voice called to him from that wonderful world in which he had once lived and from which he was banished for ever; from that world where there was neither scolding nor despair, nor the cruel, blind battling of egoism against egoism —in that world where one did not experience the torture of being picked np drunk in the streets, nor feel the derision and blows of -ough policemen. In that world everything was bright and pure and happy. And this purity was reflected in the heart of the woman he had loved more than his own life, yet she was lost to him, while his useless, senselss life remained.

A wonderful perfunje was mingled with the smell of the’wax that came from the toy. To the doomed man it seemed f t the lingers of vhe woman he had loved caressed the angel. He wanted to kiss those fingers one by one, and keep on kissing them until death should seal his lips for ever. That was why the toy seemed so wonderful to him, why he was so attracted to it. The angel had come down from heaven, where lived the soul of the woman he loved, and brought a ray of light into that grey, steaming room, into the dark soul of the man from whom all had been taken —love, life, and happiness. And side by side with the man who was at the end of life sat the little man who was only at the beginning. His eyes were fixed on the angel caressingly. Grim reality, the future had disappeared for him—his poor unfortunate father, his brutal inn issible mother, the humiliations, the cruelty, despair. Vague and unformed though Sashka’s c WAFA Hl AV VAf. IY)AVP(I llifl

chastened soul deeply. All the good in the world, all the hope and sorrow, seemed to him centred in the form of the angel, making it shine with a soft divine light, and its gossamer wings tremble' silently. Neither fath. . nor son saw each other., In different ways their bruised and troubled hearts wept and rejoiced in turn. The bridgeless chasm that separates one human being from another and makes man so lonely and weak suddenly snapped between them. With an unconscious movement tha father put his arm around the son’s neck, while the son just as unconsciously nestled his head against his father’s consumptive breast. “Did she give it to you?” At any ordinary time Sashka would have replied brutally in the negative; now the heart itself supplied the answer, while the lips pronounced the conscious lie. , “0$ course she did! Who else would have given it me?” The father made no reply; Sashka, too, lapsed into silence. A sound of snoring came from the adjoining room. There was a groan, a creak, and then the clock struck with an uncertain stroke —one, two, three. “Do you ever dream, Sashka?” the father asked. “No,” Sashka replied. “Oh, yes, I did once, though. I dreamt I was climbing up the roof after the pigeons, when my foot slipped and I fell down.” “I always dream,’’ the father continued. “Some dreams are wonderful. You see everything that used to be; you love and suffer just as in real life.” Again he lapsed into silence. The arm round Sashka’s neck trembled convulsively. The weird stillness of the night was suddenly broken by a sound of suppressed sobbing. Sashka raised his eyebrows in amazement. Gently, so as not to disturb the heavy arm round his neck, he wiped the tears from his father's eyes. It was so strange to see a grown man weeping. “Oh. Sashka, Sashka!” the father sobbed: “why all this?” “Well, really!” Sashka whispered drily; “just like a baby, to be sure.” “i am sorry ... I won’t again,” the father apologised with a pitiful smile. “But why? why?” Fioktista Petrovna turned over in bed. She heaved a deep sigh and muttered with a strange persistency: “Hold the cloth! hold It! hold it! hold it!”

It was time for bed, but the angel must first be safely disposed of for the night. It was too precious to be left on the floor, so by a piece of thread thev hung it against the damper of the stove, its delicate form being outlined against the white tiles. In that position both father and son could see it easily. Hastily gathering together the few rags on ■which he slept; the father threw them into his corner, undressed quickly, lay down on his back and instantly fixed his gaze on the angel. “Why don’t you undress?” he asked, pulling the ragged blanket closer around his chilly limbs and rearranging the coat thrown over his feet. “It is not worth while; it will soon be time to get up.” Sashka was about to add that he did not feel sleepy, when he fell asleep before the words passed his lips. He slept soundly, as though he had fallen to the bottom of a deep well. A tranquil peace settled on the weary face of the man who was at the end of life and on the face of the brave little man who was only just beginning to live. And the angel, hanging against the warm stove, began to melt. The lamp, left burning at Sashka’s request, filled the room with a smell of kerosene oil, and cast a desolate light over the scene of .slow destruction. The angel seemed to move; thick drops fell from its rosy little feet on to the hot stove; the odour of warm wax mingled with the smell of kerosene. The angel started, as though preparing for flight, then dropped with a dull thud on to the stove. An Inquisitive cockroach came up, sniffed at the formless mass, and, finding the place too warm, took refuge on the gossamer wings, then ran on further. The blue light of the rising day crept through the curtained window, while outside the early water-carrier was already heard clanging his iron can.— Translated from the Russian by R. S. Townsend.