So sleepy that you cannot keep your eyes open, still you do not stir from your place but sit and listen. And how can you help listening? Mamma is talking to someone and the sound of her voice is so sweet, so warm. Just the sound of it goes to my heart! With eyes drowsy with slumber I gaze at her face, and all at once she becomes quite quite little, her face no bigger than a button; but I see it just as plainly still: I can see her look at me and smile. I like seeing her so tiny. I screw my eyes tighter still, and now she is no bigger than a little boy reflected in the pupil of an eye, but I move and the spell is broken. I half close my eyes, change my position, trying in every way to revive the spell, but all in vain.

I get down and settle myself comfortably in an arm-chair, with my feet tucked up under me.

‘You will fall asleep again, my little Nikolai,’ mamma says to me. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs?’

‘I don’t want to go to bed, mamma,’ I answer. And vague sweet visions fill your mind, the healthy sleep of childhood weighs your eyelids down, and in a moment you are fast asleep, till someone comes to rouse you. In your dreams you feel a gentle hand touching you: you recognize it by the touch alone and still asleep you instinctively seize hold of it and press it hard to your lips.

The others have all gone; one candle only burns in the drawing-room; mamma had said that she would wake me herself. It is she who has seated herself on the chair in which I am sleeping, and strokes my hair with her wonderful tender hand, and I hear the dear familiar voice say in my ear:

‘Up you get, my darling: it is time to go to bed.’

There are no careless onlookers to restrain her and she is not afraid to pour out all her tenderness and love on me. I do not move but kiss and kiss her hand.

‘Get up now, my angel.’

She puts her other hand round the back of my head and her slender fingers run over my neck, tickling me. It is quiet and half dark in the room; I feel all quivery with being tickled and roused from sleep; mamma is sitting close beside me; she touches me; I am aware of her scent and her voice. All this makes me jump up, throw my arms around her neck, press my head to her bosom and whisper breathlessly:

‘Oh dear dear mamma, I do love you so!’

She smiles her sad bewitching smile, takes my head in both her hands, kisses me on the forehead and pulls my head on to her lap.

‘So you love me very much?’ She is silent for a moment and then says: ‘Mind you always love me and never forget me. If mamma was no longer here, you would not forget her? You would not forget her, little Nikolai?’-

She kisses me still more tenderly.

‘No! Oh don’t even talk like that, darling mamma, my own darling mamma!’ I exclaim, kissing her knees while the tears stream from my eyes – tears of love and rapture.

After that perhaps I go upstairs and in my little quilted dressing-gown stand before the ikons, and what a wonderful feeling I have as I say: ‘O Lord, bless papa and mamma.’ Repeating the prayers which my baby lips had first lisped after my beloved mother, the love of her and the love of God in some strange fashion mingled into one feeling.

After saying my prayers I would tuck myself up in the bedclothes, and my heart would feel all light, buoyant and happy. Dreams would follow one another in quick succession – but what were they about? Elusive and intangible they were but full of pure love and hope of radiant joy. Maybe I would think of Karl Ivanych and his bitter lot (he was the only unfortunate person I knew) and I would feel so sorry for him and so fond of him that tears trickled from my eyes and I said to myself: ‘God grant him happiness, let me help him and lighten his sorrow: I am ready to make any sacrifice for his sake.’ Then I would make a place at the corner of the down pillow for a favourite toy – a china hare or a dog – and rejoice to see it lying there so snug and warm. Another prayer to God to make everybody happy and content and for the weather to be fine tomorrow for our outing, and I turn over on the other side, thoughts and dreams slide together until at last I fall gently and peacefully asleep, my face still wet with tears.

Will that carefree freshness, that craving for love, that force of love that one possesses in childhood ever return? What better time in our life can there be than when the two finest virtues – innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection – are the only mainsprings of one’s life?

Where are those ardent prayers? Where that finest gift of all – the pure tears of emotion? A guardian angel flew down from heaven with a smile to wipe away those tears and waft dreams into the uncorrupted imagination of infancy.

Has life left such heavy traces in my heart that those tears and that ecstasy have deserted me for ever? Can it be that only the memories of them abide?

16 • WRITING POETRY

Nearly a month after we moved to Moscow I was sitting upstairs in my grandmother’s house at a large table, writing. Opposite me sat our drawing-master, putting some finishing touches to the head of a Turk in a turban, executed in black crayon. Volodya, craning his neck, was standing behind the drawing-master and looking over his shoulder. This head was Volodya’s first effort in crayon and was to be presented to grandmamma that very day, her name-day.

‘What about some more shadow here?’ said Volodya, rising on tiptoe and pointing to the Turk’s neck.

‘No, it is not necessary,’ said the master, putting away the crayon and holder into a box with a sliding lid. ‘It is all right now: don’t touch it any more. Well, Nikolai,’ he added, standing up and continuing to examine the Turk out of the corner of his eye, ‘won’t you tell us your great secret at last – what are you going to give your grandmother? I really think it would have been better if you too had drawn a head. Well, good-bye young gentlemen,’ he said, taking his hat and his ticket1 and departing.

At that moment I was thinking myself that a head would have been better than what I was working at. When we had been told that it would soon be our grandmother’s name-day and that we ought to prepare presents to give her the idea occurred to me of writing some verses for the occasion, and I immediately made up two verses with rhymes, hoping to do the rest just as easily. I really do not know how the idea – such a peculiar one for a child – entered my head but I do remember that I was very pleased with it and that to all questions on the subject I replied that I would certainly have a present for grandmamma but was not going to say what it was.

Contrary to my expectations I found that after composing two verses in the first heat of enthusiasm, try as I would I could not produce any more. I began to read the different poems in our books; but neither Dmitriev nor Derzhavin helped me at all – far from it, they convinced me still more of my own inability. Knowing that Karl Ivanych was fond of transcribing verses, I began surreptitiously burrowing among his papers, and among some German poems I found one in Russian which he must have written himself.

To Madame L— Petrovsk, 3 June 1825

Remember me near,

Remember me far,

O remember me

Henceforth and for ever.

Remember to my grave

How truly I can love.

This poem, penned in a beautiful round hand on a sheet of fine letter-paper, attracted me by the touching feeling with which it was imbued. I immediately learned it by heart and decided to take it as a model. The matter then went much more easily. By the name-day twelve lines of good wishes were ready, and sitting at the schoolroom table I was copying them out on vellum.

Two sheets were already spoilt… not because I had found it necessary to make any alterations (my verses seemed to me perfect) but because after the third line the tail-end of each successive one would go curving up and up so that even from a distance they looked crooked and no good at all.

The third sheet came out as sloping as the others but I decided not to do it again.