My biography is for you

You have more than once asked me to tell you the story of my life. I opposed the fulfillment of your desire, being afraid to give the “truth” of my life to the public, not because these “truths” are bitter and bad, no, it’s true everywhere and always good, no matter how and wherever it manifests itself, but we are still afraid of the truth. Giveled your desire, there is nothing to do, I must say it.

I give all my life to the court of people worthy and persons not worth being judges; But let them be judged! Here is my biography and the story of my life I begin my story from childhood, from the moment my memory captured the first images, and then all the impressions and accidents that I could keep in myself. I remember well my childhood; But it’s strange: I retained more bitter minutes in my memory or, in fact, were there more than good ones?

We, formerly children, were afraid of his name, and he himself was embodied by fear. I was born in the house of this master, on the ground, doused with blood and tears of poor peasants. I remember terrible executions, I remember the moans of the punishable - they still sound in my ears! My God! What fear he was imposed on all his subjects. When he used to leave the house to walk around the estate, the children were hiding from fear under the gate, under the shops, and who did not have time to do this, he certainly visited.

He said that he was not fed when he would not exhaust anyone, and his lunch is not for lunch! His wife and children did not dare to be kind, if they wanted! They were exhausted by the torments of others. The landowner had three more brothers and one alone was better: the first of them were crucified, the other was killed; This one was still kinder and died of his death in Nizhny Novgorod.

And it is still difficult for me to explain to myself the love of this master and his family to me; They all loved and caressed me, because I was an entertaining child, or because my mother was the first person in the house and my father, too, - I don’t know the right, I only know that the punishment of God also suffered our family. Our master fled 6 people of selected courtyards.

Two or three ran away every year, 12 people ran away once - but the escape of these sixes very angry our master, and my father, like the eldest in the yard, was accused of indulging this escape. He was condemned without listening to excuses, and sent to Nizhny in shackles. I was born near Nizhny, in the village of Zhdanovka, on the banks of the Volga in the village of Zhdanovka in those years, the landowner was Alexei Alexandrovich Pashkov, who gave the village to his daughter Elizabeth Alekseevna Pashkova, who married S.

Andreevsky George Dow. The Military Gallery of the Winter Palace, the State Hermitage of St. Petersburg So, my convicted father went in the shackles directly to the prison, and everything was taken away from the mother, except for six children; She was dead from her father. We did not stay in this village for long, and we, half -naked, in some shirts and thin fur coats, were sent to the city in custody.

Here is the first minute of grief that my soul felt and which crashed tightly into my memory. Mother's sobs greatly affected my young soul, I was then 6 years old. It was in the year SIC. We arrived at Nizhny. Dear good people fed us, gave us the matting so that we would not freeze! Need and sadness crushed my mother; She stumbled; Father was sitting in the prison; We were forbidden to see him.

Finally he was justified and released. When he came to us, they now recognized him, he was thin, pale, with hollow eyes, overgrown with a beard; After a minute fear, we rushed to hug him and everyone cried; He took me in his arms and said: thank God! I see you again! And he cried himself. He wanted to return Zhdanovka with us with us, but he urgently opposed this and said: “Let me send me to Siberia or give me to the soldiers, but I won’t go back!” He was tortured again for a long time.

Finally, we decided to sell us to a friend of the master, who then occupied an important place in the lower. We then moved to other hands and, one might say, got from hell to heaven. Our former Barina comprehended the anger of God; Everyone rebelled on him, and people and fate. His family was almost erased from the face of the earth, they all ended their life in poverty and needs.

The new master, G. We were taken to a room like a barn, a large one; There was a rink for linen in it and there were a lot of chickens on a bit. Mother still had a son. My new lady was, it cannot be said that a very kind woman. She was tall, with wide shoulders, with proud posture and a hawk face. I wore two bakers on my head; Her hair was black with a gray back, and a braid, combed high, was put on her side and a very large comb held her.

When she used to dress and go out into a girl, the earth trembles and everything falls. Through the girl, she went into the bedroom of her eldest daughter, who was truly beauty and a faithful portrait of her mother. She herself was engaged in farming, walking with a whip around the courtyard, beat the servants for guilt and without guilt, from boredom or I don’t know - she fought potted and everything that fell by her arm.She had an order of this kind; A woman with infants was released from the room twice a day for half an hour, during lunch and dinner; At this time, she should eat herself and feed the child; At night, everyone was released home.

The children were not tenacious in this house: whoever burns, who is scaling, who will kill him to death. At this time, I was a nanny with a little brother, but I had an assistant for four years, also a brother, and I was drowned my brother: I don’t know what attracted our attention in the courtyard, both of us and the assistant went out; The little brother was planted on the bed of Mother, I squeezed out a place in the feather bed; While we went for a walk, the feather bed was squeezed out, and the child flew into the basin with water.

He was pumped by force. Mother was a cowardice, she could not be excommunicated; The father, being a butler, was also busy, and when we asked for help with a cry, Mother cried and said: “Die you all” and left. The birdhouse provided us with help, but our mistress did not doze off. Somehow my father went to the Baryn with a report. She was in the pantry, she didn’t like something, she wanted to hit her father of the pan, but missed: the pan fell on her leg, she became bad, and her father left.

For this, she soon found the means to take revenge on him: all the girls in the yard should, alternately, from six in the morning to come to the bedroom to her daughter and wait for her awakening; She got up at 11 o’clock. It was my turn. At 6 o’clock I appeared, I entered the bedroom and see sweets, wonderful and in many on the tables and floors.

In the seventh year, of course, I was not distinguished by piety or my mind: I took two sweets, one for myself, and the other brothers, I looked at their pictures and took up them so that I did not see how the door opened and my mistress appeared before me. She looked at me, the evidence was on the face; I cried, fell to my knees, confessed to everything, giving her back the sweets.

She grinned, grabbed me with her hands with her head and threw me into the door; I hit the wall with my head. She beat me to the point that I lost my memory and therefore I do not know how much and how long she enjoyed my torment. I was taken home for half -dead and blood flowed from my ears for a whole week. I was no longer in the room and remained, on the same basis, the nanny of my little brother; But from that moment, the mistress hated us and after a year we were sold to Balakhna, one kindest person who had my older sister on education.

He bought his sister back in the cradle; He loved his father and my mother, and pulled us out of the hands of Varvarka. She loved her daughter, and handed her all the evil that she could! The maid young ladies, when she walked her head, always prayed to God on her knees so that the Lord would soften her heart, and always returned with her hands ochering into the blood and with swollen cheeks!

Lord, how this lady was evil! She could not pass by the girl, so as not to pull her hair a piece of hair or pinch her to blood. So, we arrived in Balakhna on a boat along the Volga; I slept all night so tightly that I did not hear how we drove all the way; landed on the shore covered with shrubs; I really liked him, I had fun, and I sang “What is the same in the world”; Then everyone sang this song.

Mother hit me on the back of the head and said: - Fool! It would be better to create a prayer! I crossed myself, and my father said: “Here you have a song, you sought the singer!” We went straight to a rich house, standing on the shores of the bay, with terraces and balconies, so funny. The Volga from his windows was visible in the palm of his hand, and the shrub covered the entire sandy shore.

Balakhna, Balakhna, Balakhna, did not represent anything good, standing on the flat bank of the Volga. When we came, we were still sleeping; Contained, washed and went straight to the girl, next to which was the bedroom of my sister and another pupil. I was taught me to bow at the feet of the Lord and the lady, to whom we now belonged. When they got up, they called us in the hall with columns and with the parquet floor.

The whole family of gentlemen and the whole family of subjects, consisting of seven people, cried. Everyone, father and mother and our whole family, rushed to the gentlemen at the feet. I roared, and did not cry, grabbed the legs of my good master and kissed them. He took me in his arms and said: - Do not cry, baby, I will not beat you, and I do not dare, because you are free!

Here are my daughter’s friends, play with them. Then the tears followed again. The father was immediately given the position of butler, and the mother - the keyboard. My sister gave me a chest with shreds that day; I was very happy, and on the same day I secretly played in the garden in a horse with one of my friends, which really loved me. She was more than me, years old; She took me from my mother, and I slept with her in the same room.

I remember, she told me a fairy tale how the knight went to the war and rode everything, rode until another day, and then rides, and then again at first; And I composed her the same fairy tale about the old man with the old woman: these everyone walked and sat. She was angry at me and was afraid that she would send him to Nizhny, and I would make it possible.They fed me from the bar table, and I, in a short time, became round like a ball; It happened to fall and will turn over three times and with difficulty getting up.

We were in great honor and love. Nobody scolded me, whether I scream, laugh, do I sing, everything got away with me! And the truth, if the Lord created paradise as beautiful as this house, where fate left us, then there would be nothing to be desired; The spirit was encouraged, hearty wounds healed - we were warm and good! Everyone was amused by me.