The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
The smallest moments become the memories that shape a life.
Nikolai Irtenyev
A watchful child turns every irritation, embarrassment, and tenderness into moral memory.
The Schoolroom
A penknifed table, patched maps, and a kneeling corner: a whole childhood learned in one room.
A child's morning begins with irritation, wounded pride, and sudden dislike for his tutor.
Read →Karl Ivanitch Wakes Me
On the 12th of August, 18-- (just three days after my tenth birthday, when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven o’clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand, flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing-gown fastened about the waist with a wide belt of the same material, a red knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slippers of goat skin, went on walking round the walls and taking aim at, and slapping, flies.
A grown man in a tasselled cap and goatskin slippers, marching solemnly around a child's bedroom swatting flies, is the first thing this narrator chooses to remember, and he remembers it down to the fly that lands in his hair. Nikolenka is ten, freshly woken and furious, yet even half asleep he reaches out to steady the little icon of his patron saint that Karl Ivanitch's swatting has knocked askew. That small careful gesture, made with sleepy, wrathful eyes, catches the whole tone: a boy who is annoyed and dutiful at once, watching a beloved, faintly ridiculous old man go about his morning.
The Morning at Petrovskoe
A boy wakes to his tutor’s fly-flap and moves through a morning of small resentments, love, and the warm order of home.
Karl Ivanitch’s Red Cap
A red knitted cap fixes the old tutor in a boy's memory before Karl says a word.
Mamma
Her smile makes the drawing room brighter and becomes the child’s measure of love.
Childhood
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