Presently Nikolai, who looked after us children, came in, a neat little man, always grave, conscientious and respectful, and a great friend of Karl Ivanych. He brought our clothes and foot-wear: boots for Volodya, but I still wore those detestable shoes with bows. I would have been ashamed to let him see me cry; besides, the morning sun was shining cheerfully in at the windows and Volodya was mimicking Marya Ivanovna (our sister’s governess) and laughing so gaily and loudly as he stood at the wash-stand that even the sober-minded Nikolai, a towel over his shoulder, soap in one hand and a basin in the other, smiled and said:

‘That’s enough, Vladimir Petrovich. Please wash now.’

I quite cheered up.

‘Sind Sic bald fertig?’1 Karl Ivanych called from the schoolroom.

His voice sounded stern: the kindly tone which had moved me to tears had vanished. In the schoolroom Karl Ivanych was an entirely different person: there he was the tutor. I dressed myself quickly, washed and with the brush still in my hand smoothing down my wet hair appeared at his call.

Karl Ivanych, spectacles on nose and book in hand, was sitting in his usual place between the door and the window. To the left of the door were two shelves: one of them belonged to us children – the other was Karl Ivanych’s own shelf. On ours were all sorts of books – lesson-books and story-books, some standing, others lying flat. Only two big volumes of Histoire des Voyages in red bindings rested decorously against the wall, and then came tall books and thick books, big books and little, bindings without books and books without bindings, since everything got pushed and crammed in anyhow when playtime arrived and we were told to tidy up the ‘library’ as Karl Ivanych pompously labelled this shelf. The collection of books on his own shelf, if not so large as ours, was even more miscellaneous. I remember three of them: a German pamphlet on the manuring of cabbages in kitchen-gardens (minus a cover), one volume of a History of the Seven Years’ War, bound in parchment with a burn at one corner, and a complete course of hydrostatics. Karl Ivanych spent most of his time reading and had even injured his eyesight by doing so; but except for these books and the Northern Bee he never read anything else.

Among the things that lay on Karl Ivanych’s shelf was one which recalls him to me more than all the rest. It was a round piece of cardboard attached to a wooden stand which could be moved up and down by means of small pegs. A caricature of a lady and a wig-maker was pasted on to the cardboard. Karl Ivanych, who was very clever at that sort of thing, had thought of and made this contrivance himself to protect his weak eyes from any very strong light.

I can sec before me now his tall figure in the quilted dressing-gown and his thin grey hair visible beneath the red skull-cap. I see him sitting beside a little table on which stands the cardboard circle with the picture of the wig-maker; it casts its shadow on his face; he holds his book in one hand, the other rests on the arm of his chair; near him lie his watch with the figure of a huntsman painted on the dial, a chequered pocket-handkerchief, a round black snuff-box, his green spectacle-case and a pair of snuffers on their tray. Everything is arranged so precisely and carefully in its proper place that this orderliness alone is enough to suggest that Karl Ivanych’s conscience is clear and his soul at peace.

If we got tired of running about the salon downstairs and crept upstairs on tiptoe to the schoolroom – there was Karl Ivanych sitting by himself in his arm-chair and reading one or other of his beloved books, with a calm, stately expression on his face. Sometimes I caught him when he was not reading: his spectacles had dropped down on his big aquiline nose, his half-closed blue eyes had a peculiar look in them, and a sad smile played on his lips. All would be quiet in the room: his even breathing and the ticking of the watch with the huntsman on the dial were the only sounds.

Sometimes he did not notice me and I used to stand at the door and think: ‘Poor, poor old man! There are a lot of us, we can play and enjoy ourselves; but he is all alone with no one to make a fuss of him. It is true what he says when he talks about being an orphan. And the story of his life is such a dreadful one! I remember him telling Nikolai about it – how awful to be in his position!’ And I would feel so sorry for him that sometimes I would go up and take his hand and say, ‘Lieber Karl Ivanych!’ He liked to have me say that, and would always pet me and show that he was touched.

On the other wall hung maps, nearly all of them torn but skilfully mended by Karl Ivanych. On the third wall, in the middle of which was the door leading to the stairs, on one side hung two rulers – the first all hacked and scored, that was ours, and the other, a new one, his own private ruler, used by him more for urging us on than for ruling lines; on the other side was a blackboard on which our more serious misdeeds were marked with noughts and our little ones with crosses. To the left of the board was the corner where we were made to kneel when we were naughty.

How well I remember that corner! I remember the shutter on the stove, the ventilator in the shutter and the noise it made when it was reversed. Sometimes you had to kneel and kneel in that corner until your knees and back ached and you would think: ‘Karl Ivanych has forgotten me. No doubt he is sitting comfortably in his soft arm-chair reading his hydrostatics – but what about me?’ And to remind him of oneself one would begin gently opening and shutting the damper, or picking bits of plaster off the walls; but if an extra large bit of plaster fell noisily on the floor the fright of it was worse than any punishment. One would peep round at Karl Ivanych, and there he sat, book in hand, apparently not noticing a thing.

In the middle of the room stood a table covered with torn black oil-cloth under which in many places it was possible to see the edges of the table all cut with penknives. Round the table there were several wooden stools, unpainted but polished by long use. The last wall was taken up by three windows. This was the view from them: directly in front, the road, every pot-hole, every stone, every rut of which had long been familiar and dear to me; beyond the road an avenue of close-clipped lime-trees, with here and there a wattle-fence visible behind it; across the avenue lay the meadow, on one side of which was a threshing-floor, and opposite to this a wood. Deep in the wood one could see the watchman’s hut.