Jacob's Ladder

10 A Froebel Miss

(1907–1910)

Marusya didn’t look back. She completely forgot those two sad years when she had sat in the watchmaker’s shop near her father, reading chaotically, unsystematically, and longing for real life—which kept eluding her—to begin. Finally, it did. Now she woke up early and performed her morning ablutions—in cold water, in the Swiss manner. She dressed in the working clothes, somewhat resembling a nurse’s uniform, that all the employees of the kindergarten for the children of poor domestics and wage laborers were required to wear. Then she dashed off to work.

This daytime shelter had been established, and was now run, by fine ladies who were, for the most part, no longer young. They were the wives and daughters of the wealthy exploiters of the same poor workers. The head inspector of this shelter was Madame Leroux, sent by the Lord God to minister to the needs of proletarian children, and to set Marusya’s fate to rights. Marusya really did do everything at a run, since the children arrived at seven in the morning, and it was her duty to greet them. In addition, when she finished her singing lessons with the youngest and lunched on bread and soup in the small dining room for employees, she took to her heels again—to her classes in the Higher Froebel Courses.

She had been accepted to the Courses solely thanks to the influence of Madame Leroux—Jacqueline Osipovna, as the employees called the Swiss lady. She was an important figure. She had been sent by the Froebel Society to organize their affairs in Kiev. For five years, she had worked tirelessly and was held in high esteem by the local government heads and their wives. Marusya passed the required examinations without exceptional distinction, but satisfactorily. Most of the other prospective students were preparatory-school graduates, and Marusya had a hard time keeping up with them. There was, in fact, very little real competition; they accepted almost everyone who wished to attend, and who could pay the tuition fees. The fees were not insignificant: fifty rubles a year. Marusya’s brother Mark sent her the necessary sum. The money arrived by a circuitous route—“Jewish” post, as it was called. Some friends of relatives or relatives of friends delivered the money, too late, by which time Marusya was already sick to death of her poverty and of her unhappy fate. On the very day she received the money, she went to the bursar of the Froebel Society, Varvara Mikhailovna Bulgakov, who kindly accepted the money even though classes had already begun.

Varvara Mikhailovna—a perspicacious woman, a widow with a family of her own, seven children and two nieces, and a paltry pension from her husband—never tired of telling her children, among whom was a future writer, that she could not leave them an inheritance; the only thing she could provide them with was an education. It was not only considerations of a higher order—promoting the education of women—that inspired her to take a job as bursar of the Froebel Society, but also material privation.

Now Marusya no longer envied either the Petersburg successes of her brother Mikhail, or Ivan Belousov, who had been expelled from the History of Philology Department and had devoted himself completely to illegal revolutionary activity. He sent her subtle hints, vague suggestions, that she should follow the only true path, but she was not tempted. She already had what she had dreamed about—the opportunity to study.

Her health, never very strong, was restored not by the sanatoriums her parents had wanted to send her to, but by the intensely busy life that she herself had chosen. The migraines, nervous attacks, and minor ailments she had been prone to disappeared of their own accord. The rest of her life confirmed that her health always suffered when she was idle, and instantly improved as soon as she busied herself with a grandiose scheme, such as improving humanity.

Her studies in the Froebel Courses afforded her such pleasure that the difficulties of daily existence seemed insignificant to her. Many years later, she recalled this time as the happiest in her life. That random, chaotic reading she had engaged in before she entered the Courses proved to be very useful: all the book knowledge she had gleaned from the wonderful encyclopedia or from reading literature found its proper application in the new disciplines. And what disciplines they were! Marusya went to lectures every day: the history of literature, philosophy, psychology, diction and declamation, as well as physiology, zoology, and botany. There was even a class in gymnastic exercises for children. The lectures were read by the best professors, whose names Marusya would recall with pride, or with horror, or be afraid to mention at all, for the rest of her life—but not one of them would she ever forget.

This information, which she hardly managed to digest, had no value in and of itself, however. It was only valuable insofar as it served a larger purpose, a greater goal—the education of a marvelous, free, new human being. Madame Leroux did not abandon her protégée. Now and then she invited Marusya to her home, questioned her about the teachers, and shared her own plans with her. Several times, she invited her to the theater, to concerts. She gave her books to read on pedagogy, the most novel and recent trends from Switzerland and Italy. It never occurred to Marusya that Madame Leroux was grooming her to become her assistant.

Meanwhile, Marusya was becoming ever more interested and involved in her work in the kindergarten. Now she was not only teaching singing, but also putting on little plays with the older children. Jacqueline Osipovna encouraged her in these activities. Marusya had no more doubt that pedagogy was the only worthy undertaking; the revolutionary ideas of her elder brother Joseph, who was stuck in Siberia, were no longer so attractive to her. The ills of society would wither away and disappear by themselves if children were given, according to their abilities, moral guidance and a proper education.

Ivan Belousov’s educational work was, of course, socially useful; but Marusya’s work with children of the same proletariat that Ivan was trying to enlighten was much more in keeping with her own notions of the social good.

When he returned home for Christmas, Mikhail found that his little sister had grown up into a young woman, both intellectually and physiologically, and he was somewhat abashed. His former teasing, playful demeanor toward her was no longer appropriate, and there was even some tension in their relations at first. He was used to having his sister hang on to his every word, but now she showed an independence of thought and judgment, and a discomfiting sharpness he was seeing for the first time. He was no longer her idol. She didn’t go into raptures about his poetry, which he no longer wrote for domestic amusement, but with unremitting earnestness.

She insulted her brother with concise, withering critiques of his poetry: It’s not Blok. It’s not Nadson. It’s not even Bryusov. It was also vexing that this provincial girl, whom he had coached and tried to instruct since childhood, was studying, in his absence, without his guidance, the most important science of all—learning itself.

With Mikhail’s arrival, the house livened up. Even old Kerns—who was deeply affected by the banishment to Siberia of his eldest son, from whom they received only smatterings of news—grew more cheerful. He was a silent presence at the evening gatherings of friends, and was visibly pleased at the young people’s arrival. In addition to Mikhail’s old friends Ivan Belousov and Kosarkovsky, there were new faces, too. A guitar came to replace the all-but-destroyed piano. It was a poor substitute, but the musical repertoire of the guests sitting around the table changed with it, and there was more singing. There was nothing they didn’t sing—Jewish songs, Ukrainian songs, Russian love songs …

Mikhail bought Marusya tickets to the theater and the philharmonic, five tickets at a time—balcony tickets, it must be said, but this made Marusya very happy, because she could invite her cousins or her girlfriends. Mikhail’s generosity was lavish, and every one of his visits home was like a holiday. Perhaps the only thing that put a damper on these visits was a sense of injured annoyance that arose in her each time: in the capital, Mikhail was moving in social circles that seemed to be populated by semi-celestial beings, and he was in ecstasy over them. For many years, Marusya kept one of his letters from that period. She showed him the letter only years later, during one of their deep ideological disputes, as evidence of his vanity and propensity for idle chatter and name-dropping.

Self-impressed and opportunistic. That’s what he is! Marusya thought angrily. My brother is just like Khlestakov, in Gogol’s play, The Government Inspector. The letter was preserved in the willow chest, together with the other correspondence that Marusya had intended to sort through. But she never got the chance.