The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

“Sit there without food or water, you nasty thing, until you confess!” Nanny said, turning the key in the heavy lock.

This event, it goes without saying, raised a commotion all through the house. Every one of the servants thought up some pretext to come running to

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Chapter Three

Nanny to discuss the interesting new development. There was a regular club meeting going on in our nursery all day.

Feklusha had no father. Her mother lived in the village and came to our house to help our laundress with the washing. Naturally, she soon found out what had happened and came at a run to the nursery with noisy and profuse complaints and protestations that her daughter was innocent. But Nanny was quick to quiet her down. “Don’t make such a big noise, lady! Just wait a little bit, and we’ll get to the bottom of things, we’ll find out where that daughter of yours stashed the stolen goods!” she said so harshly and with such a meaningful look that the poor laundress lost her courage and took herself off.

Popular opinion was decidedly against Feklusha. “If she snitched the jam that means she snitched the rest of the stuff too,” everyone said. The general indignation against the girl ran particularly high because these mysterious and repeated disappearances had been hanging like a heavy burden over all the servants for many weeks. Each one feared in his heart that he might be suspected, God forbid. Therefore the unmasking of the thief was a relief to everyone.

But just the same, Feklusha would not confess.

Nanny went to visit her prisoner several times in the course of the day, but she kept stubbornly repeating her refrain, “I didn’t steal anything. God will punish Maria Vasilievna for harming a fatherless child.”

Toward evening my mother came into the nursery.

“Aren’t you being a trifle too harsh with the miserable girl, Nanny?” she said with some concern. “How can you leave a child without food all day?”

But Nanny would not hear of clemency. “What are you thinking of, my lady? To take pity on such a one as that! Didn’t she almost manage to bring honest people under suspicion, the low, nasty thing!” she asserted with such conviction that my mother was unable to go on insisting and left without lightening the young criminal’s lot by one iota.

The next day came. And Feklusha still refused to confess. Her judges were already beginning to feel a certain uneasiness when suddenly Nanny went to see our mother at dinnertime, with an expression of triumph on her face.

“Our little bird has sung!” she said happily.

“In that case,” Mama very naturally asked, “where are the stolen things?”

“She still won’t tell us where she hid them, the nasty thing!” Nanny replied. “She prattles all kinds of rubbish. She says, ‘I forgot.’ But just let her sit under lock and key for another hour or two—and maybe it’ll all come back to her!”

And indeed Feklusha made a full confession toward evening, describing in great detail how she had stolen all these articles with the object of selling them later. Since no convenient occasion had presented itself, however, she

Sofiia Kovalevskaia, A Thief in the House

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had kept them hidden for a long time under the thick matting in the corner of her little closet. But then, when she saw that the disappearances had been noticed and that the thief was being hunted in earnest, she got scared. First she thought she would simply put the things back where they belonged, but then she was afraid to try that. So she wrapped them all up in a bundle inside her apron and threw them into a deep pond on the other side of our estate.

Everybody wanted so desperately to find some solution to this painful affair that Feklusha’s tale was not subjected to very close scrutiny. After some lamentation over the needless loss of the articles, all satisfied themselves with her explanation.

The culprit was released from detention and a short, just sentence was pronounced over her. It was decided to give her a good hiding and then send her back to the village to her mother. Despite her tears and her mother’s protests, this sentence was carried out immediately. Afterwards another girl was sent to serve the nursery in Feklusha’s place.

Several weeks passed. Little by little order was restored in the household, and everyone began to forget what had happened. But then one evening, when everything was quiet in the house and Nanny, having put us to bed, was getting ready to retire for the night herself, the door to the nursery opened softly. The laundress Aleksandra, Feklusha’s mother, was standing there. She alone had stubbornly resisted admitting the obvious and continued to maintain without surcease that her daughter had been “harmed for nothing.” There had already been several strong altercations with Nanny on this point, until Nanny finally gave up and forbade her to come into the nursery any more, deciding that it was useless to try to reason with a stupid peasant woman.