But these evil outbursts were never coincident with
the moments of aversion. My mother always wore
black, as though in mourning. We were in fairly
good circumstances, but we hardly knew any one.
II
My mother concentrated her every thought, her every
care, upon me. Her life was wrapped up in my
life. That sort of relation between parents and
children is not always good for the children ... it
is rather apt to be harmful to them. Besides,
I was my mother’s only son ... and only children
generally grow up in a one-sided way. In bringing
them up, the parents think as much of themselves as
of them.... That’s not the right way.
I was neither spoiled nor made hard by it (one or
the other is apt to be the fate of only children),
but my nerves were unhinged for a time; moreover, I
was rather delicate in health, taking after my mother,
whom I was very like in face. I avoided the companionship
of boys of my own age; I held aloof from people altogether;
even with my mother I talked very little. I liked
best reading, solitary walks, and dreaming, dreaming!
What my dreams were about, it would be hard to say;
sometimes, indeed, I seemed to stand at a half-open
door, beyond which lay unknown mysteries, to stand
and wait, half dead with emotion, and not to step
over the threshold, but still pondering what lay beyond,
still to wait till I turned faint ... or fell asleep.
If there had been a vein of poetry in me, I should
probably have taken to writing verses; if I had felt
an inclination for religion, I should perhaps have
gone into a monastery; but I had no tendency of the
sort, and I went on dreaming and waiting.
III
I have just mentioned that I used sometimes to fall
asleep under the influence of vague dreams and reveries.
I used to sleep a great deal at all times, and dreams
played an important part in my life; I used to have
dreams almost every night. I did not forget them,
I attributed a significance to them, regarded them
as fore-warnings, tried to divine their secret meaning;
some of them were repeated from time to time, which
always struck me as strange and marvellous. I
was particularly perplexed by one dream. I dreamed
I was going along a narrow, ill-paved street of an
old-fashioned town, between stone houses of many stories,
with pointed roofs. I was looking for my father,
who was not dead, but, for some reason or other, hiding
away from us, and living in one of these very houses.
And so I entered a low, dark gateway, crossed a long
courtyard, lumbered up with planks and beams, and
made my way at last into a little room with two round
windows. In the middle of the room stood my father
in a dressing-gown, smoking a pipe. He was not
in the least like my real father; he was tall and
thin, with black hair, a hook nose, with sullen and
piercing eyes; he looked about forty. He was displeased
at my having found him; and I too was far from being
