Short Fiction - Vladimir Korolenko (easy books to read in english txt) 📗

child, but as time went on, the singular likeness between the boy’s fate and his own interested him. “Hm! Hm!” he thoughtfully muttered to himself as he looked at the child from the corner of his eyes, “this chap is also an invalid. If we two could be put together, one useful man might be made of us.” And after that he gazed at the child more and more frequently. IV

The child was born blind. Who was to blame for this misfortune? No one. There was no slightest shade of the “evil eye;” the very cause of the misfortune itself was hidden somewhere in the depths of the mysterious and complex processes of life. Anguish pierced the mother’s heart as she gazed on her blind boy. She suffered not alone as a mother, in her sympathy with her son’s affliction, together with a sad prescience of the painful future awaiting her child; but added to these feelings there dwelt within the depths of the young mother’s heart a consciousness that the cause of this misfortune may have been latent, as a dreaded possibility, in those who gave him life. This in itself sufficed to make the little creature, with his beautiful sightless eyes, the central figure of the family and its unconscious despot. Every member of the household strove to gratify his lightest fancy.

What would in time have become of this boy, unconsciously predisposed as he was to resent his misfortune, and whose egotism was fostered by all those who surrounded him, had not a strange fatality combined with the Austrian sabres to compel Uncle Maxim to settle down in the country in his sister’s family⁠—no one can tell. By the presence of the blind boy in the house, the active mind of the crippled soldier was gradually and imperceptibly directed into a new channel. He would still smoke his pipe hour after hour, but the old expression of pain and dejection had given place to one of interest. Yet the more Uncle Maxim pondered, the more he wrinkled his thick brows, and more and more heavy grew the volumes of smoke. Finally one day he made up his mind to interfere.

“That youngster,” he said, puffing out ring after ring of smoke, “will be much more unhappy than I am. Far better had he never been born.”

An expression of acute suffering saddened the mother’s face as she gave her brother a reproachful glance. “It is cruel to remind me of this, Max,” she said gently, “and to do it wantonly!”

“I am simply telling you the truth,” replied Maxim. “I have lost a hand and a foot, but I have eyes. This youngster has no eyes, and in time will have neither hands nor feet nor will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pray understand me, Anna,” said Maxim in a gentler tone, “I would not reiterate these cruel truths had I no object. This boy’s nervous organization is extremely sensitive; hence it is possible so to develop his other faculties that their acuteness will compensate him, at least to a certain degree, for his blindness. But to attain this he must use his faculties; and the use of one’s faculties must be compelled by necessity. An unwise solicitude, that prevents him from making any effort, will ruin his chances for living a full life.”

The mother was sensible, and therefore knew how to control that instinctive impulse which urged her, at every pitiful cry of the child, to rush to him.

A few months after this conversation the boy could creep about the rooms with ease and rapidity; he listened intently to every sound, and by his sense of touch eagerly examined every object that happened to come within his reach. He soon learned to know his mother by her footstep, by the rustling of her dress, and by certain other signs perceptible to him alone; it made no difference to him whether there were many persons in the room or not, or if they changed their positions⁠—he never failed to turn with unerring accuracy toward the spot where she sat. When she lifted him in her arms he knew at once that he was sitting in his mother’s lap. When others took him up, he would pass his little hands rapidly over the face of the person, thus recognizing almost at once the nurse, Uncle Maxim, or his father. But if it happened to be a stranger, then the movements of the tiny hands were more deliberate; the boy passed them carefully and attentively over the unfamiliar face, his features betraying his intense interest. He seemed to be looking at the strange face with his fingertips.

By nature the blind boy was a very lively and active child; but as month succeeded month, blindness set its impress on the boy’s temperament, which began to manifest its true character. He gradually lost his rapidity of motion. He would sit perfectly still for hours in some remote corner, with unchanging expression, as if listening. When at times the various sounds that usually distracted his attention ceased, and the room became quiet, the child would sit absorbed in thought, and upon his beautiful face, serious beyond his years, an expression of bewilderment and surprise would appear.

Uncle Maxim was right. The exquisite organization of the child manifested itself in an extraordinary susceptibility of the senses of hearing and touch, by means of which he verified to a certain extent the correctness of his impressions. All who saw him were amazed at the wonderful delicacy of his touch. Occasionally it even seemed as if he were able to distinguish colors; for when, as sometimes happened, bits of bright-colored cloth fell into his hands, his slender fingers would linger over them, while a look half of perplexity, half of interest, would flash across his face. As time went on, however, it grew more and more evident that his susceptibility was principally developed in the sense of hearing. He quickly learned to distinguish the different rooms in the house by