雙語·居里夫人的故事 第二章　瑪妮雅學習

Chapter II　Manya Learning

MANYA'S school was an odd place and she learned odd things: how, for instance, to do what one is forbidden to do; how to hide one's disobedience quickly; how to seem to be doing what one isn't; how to diddle government inspectors; and because Manya was cleverer than most children, she was soon doing all these things better than the others. But the queerest thing of all in that school was that her form mistress and the headmistress found her a great help and not, as you might have thought, a great nuisance.

One day her class of twenty-five were having a delicious history lesson—a much more delicious history lesson than English children have ever had because it was a forbidden lesson. All the twenty-five and their mistress knew it was forbidden.

There they sat, the twelve year olds. Manya, aged only ten, was in the third row, near the high window looking out on to the snowy lawn. All the twenty-five were in navy blue with steel buttons and white collars, their hair tightly plaited and tied behind their ears with a neat tight bow. Their ears were all stretched, left ear listening hard for every word of history, right ear quick to catch the first tinkle of a certain door bell—conspirators all! Mistress and pupils were waiting, working, waiting to be caught!

Manya was in the middle of answering a question… Her mistress liked her to answer as she was always top in history, top too in arithmetic, literature, German and French. On this occasion she was telling what she had learned of the Polish king, Stanislas Auguste.

“He was elected King of Poland,” said she, “in 1764. He was a clever, highly educated king, a friend of poets and artists. He understood the causes of Poland's weakness and tried to make her strong, but alas, he had no courage...” Even Manya knew that a king should have courage and her voice was full of fierce regret, the fierce regret of a ten year old, who understood quite a lot. Tang—, tang—, ting, ting. Everybody shivered once. Everybody moved quickly, absolutely silently. Tupcia, as they called their mistress, piled her Polish books, every child piled her exercise books and her Polish history. The five whose duty it was, gathered all the books into their aprons and carried them with all speed to the boarders' bedrooms. The rest got out their needlework and were making exquisite buttonholes in cotton squares as if they had never done anything else.

The Russian inspector came in, accompanied by the unhappy headmistress, who had not been able to prevent his walking fast, and was in a panic lest the warning bell, with its two long rings and two short, had not given the children time to hide their disobedience. But there was no sign of anything but needlework, except that perhaps five little girls looked rather hot and breathless. But a man would not notice that.

Monsieur Hornberg, the inspector, sat down heavily. He was a fine looking man in spite of his fat and his shaved head. His uniform helped him with its yellow trousers and blue jacket fastened with well-polished silver buttons. In silence, he looked piercingly at the children through his gold-rimmed glasses and glanced swiftly at the book Tupcia had laid open on the desk with a bored air.

“You were reading aloud while they worked?” he questioned. “What is the book?”

“Krylov's Fairy Tales. We have just begun it to-day.”

M. Hornberg knew that Russian book well and sincerely approved of it. He opened one of the desks and found it tidily empty. The button-holing had stopped and the children were politely waiting for his words of wisdom. It was not he who would have the eyes to see in their motionless faces the fear, the cleverness, the hatred that was there behind their solemn eyes.

“Mademoiselle, call up one of those young people, please.”

Tupcia was relieved; she couId choose one who would not make a hash of things. The one, however, was praying not to be called up. “Don't let it be me, God, please God…” She did not hear God say: “Marya Sklodovska, the world is waiting for you to learn to do disagreeable things greatly.” She did hear Tupcia call Marya Sklodovska!

She got up, turned hot, turned cold; shame clutched at her young throat.

“Say the Lord's Prayer,” ordered Hornberg.

Manya obeyed, saying it in Russian as the foreign ruler bade, not in Latin, according to the custom of her own religion.

“Mention the Czars of Holy Russia since Catherine II.”

“Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I, Nicolas I, Alexander II,” recited Manya in perfect Russian as if she had been born in St. Petersburg.

“And the names and titles of the Czar's family.”

“Her Majesty, the Empress, His Imperial Highness, the Czarevitch Alexander, His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke...”

“Good! Who governs us?”

Manya hesitated.

“Who governs us?” repeated the inspector, irritated.

“His Majesty, Alexander II, Czar of all the Russias,” stammered Manya, turning pale.

The inspection was over and the inspector gone, very well satisfied with what he had seen and heard and feeling that he was making a real success of his department. But Manya broke down and cried as if her heart would break.

At the end of school, outside in the street, the excited children had a tale to tell their aunts and mothers and nurses who had come to fetch them; but in whispers they told it, for they knew only too well that any passer-by, any lounger, might be a spy, who would repeat to the government what even a child said.

Hela and Manya took their Aunt Lucia by each arm. “The inspector questioned Manya,” whispered Hela. “She answered like a brick, but cried like a baby afterwards. Anyway, the inspector hadn't any fault to find with anybody.”

Manya held her tongue. She hated it all—hated being afraid, hated being made to feel that she belonged to an enslaved nation, hated having to lie, to lie all the time. As she clung to her aunt's arm, she remembered all the things she hated: the Ogre who had managed to turn her father out of his professorship. That had made them so that they were obliged to have students lodging in their house, which was horrid and often made them uncomfortable and unhappy. But that happiness was as nothing in comparison with not having Zosia any more, Zosia to tell her tales, Zosia to listen to all she had to say. Zosia had caught typhus from one of the students and had gone away for ever.

Across the sunny, snowy park the three made their way to the old town of Warsaw with its narrow streets and high, sloping-roofed houses ringed with snow. From unexpected comers, odd little sculptures looked out, Virgins' faces or strange stone animals.

Suddenly, the old church bells clanged out above their heads, clear and noisy in the frosty air. There were quite a crowd of churches just there and Aunt Lucia drew the children in through the dark door of one where they used to go to mass years before. How could Manya go in now, without Zosia? But she went in, because there was a colder fear than any other in her heart now and she wanted to persuade God to let her mother get better. “Let mother get better,” she prayed. “Let me die instead of mother, please, God.”

Out in the crisp winter air again Aunt Lucia had a treat to propose: they were to go down to the Vistula to buy the household apples from the market boats. Forgetting their sorrows, the children ran down the long steps that led to the river. The great Vistula rolled its yellowish, sombre vastness around low sandy islands, great empty barges slowly heaved against one another, sometimes thudding with a low sound into the floating baths and wash-houses at the bank. Only around the two long apple barges was there life in that winter season, for they had come from far up the river to bring red, rosy joy to children in Warsaw. The master, cosy in his sheepskin coat, swaying as he moved about the craft, lifted the straw here and there to show the purchasers how red and polished and free from frost his merchandise was in spite of its many days' journeying down the Vistula.

Hela first, then Manya threw down muff and satchel and began excitedly choosing their own apples, piling them in the great wicker basket that was to carry them home, throwing any bad ones they had the luck to find far far out into the river, seeing who could throw the furthest.

Then Aunt Lucia engaged a boy to carry home the basket and marched her charges off the boat, each munching the reddest of all the apples.

At home at five o'clock, there was a meal of something more substantial than apples and then homework round the big desk. Soon a loud murmur rose from those aggravating people who do lessons aloud, a trying custom in other lands besides Poland. Those children had to learn their lessons in Russian. Mathematics in Russian for Polish children were even harder than usual. French and German grammar was all in Russian and words they did not know had to be looked up in Russian dictionaries. They might, of course, explain their difficulties to themselves in Polish, but when the next morning came they had to say the lesson in Russian and to go through a geometrical problem in a foreign language. They had to write their essays in a tongue not their own and to read French directly into Russian. Learning was a hard matter.

But Manya was a witch. She knew things by magic without learning them; she had to read her Russian verses only twice to know them without a mistake, lucky scrap! But she was also a kind-hearted scrap, for when her homework was done under time, she would help other people through their maze of difficulty. Not always, though. If she got a chance, she would put a book between her elbows on the table, her hands over her ears to keep out Hela's recitation, and… read! When Manya read, there was no waking her from her absorption; she heard nothing. A whole household might plan to tease and make a noise like all the zoos let loose with tin cans to play with and yet Manya wouldn't hear till her book was done. That was concentration and it was a joyful gift to have seized from the lucky-bag of life.

Once the others built a scaffolding of chairs round her as she read, a chair on each side, a chair behind and on top, three more chairs and so on over her head. She didn't hear or see a shadow of a chair or builder. She didn't hear delighted whispering or stifled laughter. When she had finished, she raised her head and down came the whole edifice amid shouts of laughter from the others. That didn't please Manya. She rubbed a bruised shoulder and went into another room, flashing at her elders as she passed just: “That's silly!”

When bedtime came, the Sklodovski girls slept on skins in the dining-room because the bedrooms had to be given to the students who paid. In the night the skins used to slip off and leave them cold. In the morning they had to get up in the dark because the dining-room had to be ready for the students' breakfast.

But such things as that were of no importance to Manya. Her mother was growing more and more ill, even she could see that. She prayed to God always, but He seemed not to listen to ten year old Manya. And in the spring, in May, before she was eleven, her mother slipped away, whispering to her little girl: “I love you.”

Manya was learning very much; was learning that life asks for courage from nations and men and children, not only from kings. She had thoughts of her own about it all. It seemed to her unjust and cruel and not at all to be understood. She was headstrong and angry and not at all submissive.