In bad company

Chapter Three

I

Under Maxim's plan the blind boy was left, in everything possible, to fend for himself. The results were excellent. Indoors, he made no impression of helplessness at all. He moved about confidently, and kept his room neat, and his clothes and toys in order. So far as was feasible, too, Maxim introduced physical exertion. The boy had a regular system of exercises; and when he was five Maxim gave him a little horse, a mild and harmless creature. The mother could not imagine, at first, how her blind child could possibly ride. It was pure madness, she told her brother. But Maxim threw all his powers of persuasion into play, and in two or three months the boy was riding freely, needing Iochim's guidance only where the paths turned sharply.
Thus, his blindness was not allowed to hinder his physical development; and, to the best of human ability, its effect on his character, too, was minimised. He was a tall child for his age, and finely built; rather pale, with delicate and expressive features. His black hair accentuated his pallor, and his big, dark eyes, almost unmoving, gave his face a peculiar expression that people would notice at first glance, and wonder at. A tiny crease that cut across his forehead; a habit of keeping his head inclined a little forward; a look of sadness that sometimes clouded his handsome features—such were the only outward effects of his blindness. His movements, in familiar places, were free and confident. Yet it was easy to see that his natural liveliness was under constraint; and there were times when it burst through in nervous fits of some intensity.

II

Sound impressions had now definitely become dominant in the blind boy's life, the chief form in which his thoughts were shaped, the focus of his mental processes. He would remember songs because their melodies won his heart; and their content, to him, would be coloured with the melancholy, or the merriment, or the dreaminess of their music. More attentively even than before, he listened for the voices of Nature around him. And, fusing his own sense impressions with the loved melodies that had surrounded him from childhood, he was able, at times, to express himself musically, in free improvisations in which it would have been difficult to pick out what was his own, and what taken from the folk songs he knew so well. Not even he himself could distinguish these two elements in his music—so wholly were they merged within him. His mother was teaching him to play the piano, and he was quick to master all her lessons; but he did not lose his love of Iochim's pipe. The piano was richer, fuller, stronger. But the piano was bound to the house, whereas the pipe could be carried along everywhere, and its music blended so completely with the steppe's soft breathing that Petro could not always have said what it was that brought the vague, new thoughts that filled his mind—the wind from far places, or the music he himself was playing.
This passion for music became the core of the boy's mental development, bringing interest and variety into his life. Maxim took advantage of it to give the boy a knowledge of his country's history, woven of sound. His interest seized by a song, the child would learn about its heroes and their stories, and through these—the story of his motherland. This, in its turn, aroused an interest in literature. And when the boy was eight Maxim undertook his first regular instruction. He had made a special study of methods for teaching the blind, and the boy derived much pleasure from his lessons. They brought a new element into life, a positiveness and clarity that served as a balance to the more vague sensations of music.
Thus, the days were well occupied, and there was no lack of new impressions. The boy's life might have been thought as full as any child's can be. He seemed not even to realise his blindness.
And still, there was a strange, unchildlike melancholy in his nature, coming often to the surface. Maxim attributed it to the lack of playmates, and did what he could to supply this need.
Little boys from the village were invited to come and play at the manor. But they were bashful and constrained. The unaccustomed surroundings—and, too, Petro's blindness—made them uncomfortable. They would huddle together, whispering timidly to one another when they could muster up the courage, and casting awed glances at the blind boy. Out of doors, in the garden or off in the fields, they would feel more at ease, and begin to play; but, somehow, Petro was always left out of these games. He could only listen, with wistful longing, to the merry tumult.
Sometimes Iochim would gather the children around him and tell them stories. He knew all sorts of jolly folk tales. The village youngsters, familiar from birth with the addle-pated imps and the artful witches of Ukrainian folklore, would break in with stories of their own, and the time would pass in lively talk and laughter. Petro always listened attentively, with evident interest; but he seldom smiled. Much of the humour, evidently, failed to reach him—and small wonder; for, after all, he could not see the glint in Iochim's eyes, or the laughter in his very wrinkles, or the way he twitched his long, drooping moustache.