The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

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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Chapter Three

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.