IX
Now, when anything attracted his attention he always asked what it meant; and his mother, or more frequently Uncle Maxim, would explain to him the nature of the objects or of the creatures that caused these various sounds. His mother’s explanations, more lively and graphic, impressed the boy with greater force; but sometimes this impression would be too painful. Upon the features of the young woman, herself suffering, could be read the expression of her inmost feelings, and in her eyes a silent protest or a look of pain, as she strove to convey to the child an idea of form and color. With contracted brow and wrinkled forehead the boy concentrated his whole attention. Evidently his brain was at work struggling with difficult problems; his unpractised imagination strove to shape from the descriptions given him a new image—a feat which it was unable to perform. At such times Uncle Maxim always frowned with displeasure; and when the tears appeared in the mother’s eyes, and the child’s face grew pale from the effect of his intense effort, Maxim would interfere, and taking his sister’s place would tell his nephew stories, in the invention of which he would try to use only such ideas as related to sound and space. Then the face of the blind boy would grow calmer.
“And is he big?” the child asked about the stork, who seemed to be beating in his nest a slow tattoo. Saying this he began to spread out his arms; for this was his custom whenever he asked such questions, and Uncle Maxim would always tell him when he had extended them far enough. But this time he had stretched out his little arms to their utmost limit, and Uncle Maxim said—
“No, he is still larger. If he were brought into this room and put upon the floor, his head would reach above the back of the chair.”
“He is large,” said the boy thoughtfully; “and the redwing is like this,” slightly parting his folded palms.
“Yes, the redwing is like this. But the large birds never sing so well as little ones. The redwing tries to make everybody pleased to hear him, but the stork is a serious bird; he stands on one leg in his nest, and looks about like an angry master watching his workmen, and mutters aloud, heeding not that his voice is hoarse, and that he can be overheard by outsiders.”
The boy laughed merrily while he listened to these descriptions, and for a time forgot his painful efforts to understand his mother’s words. Yet her stories possessed a greater charm for him, and he preferred to question her rather than Uncle Maxim.