雙語·居里夫人的故事 第一章　瑪妮雅唱歌

Chapter I　Manya Singing

WHY not? Why not? Why not? Why shouldn't Manya be allowed to read? She didn't ask the question. She would not think of asking her gentle, beautiful mother why not; she only puzzled her own little stubborn head where a pair of bright, grey-blue eyes looked penetratingly out from under a shock of yellow hair.

It was always like that! She had only to say: “Mayn't I read?” or to put out a hand towards a book and someone would be sure to say: “Manya dear, run into the garden” or “You haven't been to see your doll all day” or “Build me a house with those lovely new blocks.” Manya knew all their wiles. Reading was naughty—naughty for her, but not for Bronia; and yet she could read and Bronia couldn't. It was very puzzling and apparently all the fault of the day when she had snatched a book from Bronia. She hadn't meant anything wrong. Bronia had asked her to play with the cardboard letters when they had nothing to do in their uncle's orchard except lie on the grass and move the bits of cardboard into words. Then one day, after they came home, their father had said to Bronia: “Let's see how the reading has got on.” Bronia had stood with the open book, spelling the words and stumbling over them. So Manya had seized it from her and read! “Manya!” her mother had exclaimed, surprised and shocked and her father had looked solemn while Bronia had sulked. There had been nothing for Manya to do but to cry and sob out: “Beg pardon... Manya didn't mean it.”

Since that day no reading had been allowed, so Manya stood hesitating at her mother's door wondering what she should do. All morning she had been carrying ammunition for Bronia across the long dormitory floor in the great war against Joseph's and Hela's fort. The fort was built of the new blocks and the ammunition consisted of blocks also and she had grown too hot and tired, so that game had been stopped as far as she was concerned. There was nothing for it but to find her elder sister and go into the garden. “Zosia!… Zosia!” she called through the house and the two went off hand in hand. Zosia was twelve and almost grown up in the eyes of the other four, who were Joseph, Hela, Bronia, aged eight, and Manya. Manya was four when she learned to read and five on the day we are talking about, which explains why she was not allowed to read. Monsieur and Madame Sklodovski did not want their clever little girl pressed. But it had not occurred to them to tell her the reason.

The garden was big, level and walled in, with a rather worn grass patch and lots of trees. In much of it they could play to their hearts' content, but they had to be careful what they did on their way out and in, because they had to pass the windows of an Ogre. The garden belonged to the boys' High School, and in the school both the Sklodovskis and the Ogre lived. Even Zosia was nervous when she had to pass those windows and lowered her voice to a whisper, telling her little sister to be quite silent while they tip-toed past.

Although she was only five, Manya already knew quite a number of things. She knew that the Ogre was an ogre because he belonged to the people who had cut her own country into three parts and shared them out, like a giant dividing his spoil with two other giants. She was a Polish child and the ogre was the Russian Director of the school in which her father taught Mathematics and Physics. He was there to see that all the Polish men, women and children pretended properly to be Russian and Manya knew that with such people you had to be on your guard, careful and quiet so as not to be caught.

There was another thing that Manya knew very well: the country was a lovely place, though she lived in the town. In the country there were crowds and crowds and uncles and aunts and cousins; there was a stream to paddle in and mud to make mud pies and plenty of sun to cook the delectable cakes. There was the old lime tree that seven cousins sat in, eating gooseberries from cool cabbage leaves. When she appeared they would hoist her up to their crooked perch and make a collection for her from each of the seven cabbage leaves. In July, Manya was a wild little peasant.

Then there was her mother. Manya knew that she loved her more than anything else in the world. She was very beautiful, so it was not surprising that Manya thought so, or that she loved her beautiful singing. She loved, too, her mother's odd little way of stroking her hair and her forehead when she went to bed, instead of kissing her and when, in the evening all the family knelt around the table and prayed “Pray God make our mother better,” Manya never supposed it was because her mother was ill or that that had anything to do with not being kissed.

Manya had been born on November the 7th, 1867, and named Marya, but she was more often called Manya or Manyusia—or oftenest of all, a strange pet name, Anciupecio, for in Poland they love nicknames. Zosia had spent the time in the garden telling her a long story about Anciupecio, because Zosia told stories better than anybody else and often made up gay little plays which she acted for her brother and sisters, taking all the parts herself. So real were those plays that Manya used to laugh and shudder by turns and not be quite sure in which country she lived or who were the people next door or who the people in the story.

When they reached the house, they found that their father had. just finished school and was sitting in his study, the largest, happiest room in the house. The two entered very quietly. There sat their mother making a pair of shoes for Manya. Creak, creak went the scissors, cutting through the hard leather. Snap, snap crackled the waxed thread as it tightened and grew taut between the layers, and clack, clack tapped the hammer on the nails. Madame Sklodovski's thin white hands were nimble and cunning even at such hard work as that—and they needed to be, because five children wear out a mighty deal of shoe leather in a year.

That evening their father was talking about the Ogre. He often talked about him. The Ogre meant much to the family and was going to mean more. He had recently punished a Polish boy savagely for making a grammatical mistake in Russian, which is one of the hardest of foreign languages, and Monsieur Sklodovski had not been able to resist the temptation of saying: “But you too, sir, though you are a Russian by birth, sometimes make a grammatical mistake in that language.” The Ogre did not at once retort. He glowered and scowled, but he saved up his revenge for another year.

Manya wandered round her father's room, straight little nose in the air, dreamily thinking her own thoughts, touching her pet ornaments, keeping carefully from disturbing her brother and sisters, who were doing their homework around their father's big, flat-topped desk. Manya was not at all interested in the splendid picture of a bishop which hung on the wall; it was said to be by a famous painter, but that was not the kind of thing she liked. She loved the clock on the desk and stayed a long time peering into its face and listening to its loud tick, tock. Then she ran her fingers daintily along the smooth marble top of the many-coloured Sicilian table; she liked that too, but not the whatnot with its blue Sèvres cup. She drew herself carefully away from that as the thing was breakable and something terrible might happen if she touched it. Not so the next treasures; they were more friendly and more mysterious with lovely, long, incomprehensible names—the barometer hanging on the wall which her father examined and tapped so seriously every day under the children's watchful eyes; the glass cupboard containing glass tubes and delicate balances and minerals and a goldleaf electroscope. “What... ?” Manya began one day.

“What are those?” interrupted her father in a solemn, teasing voice, “Those are physical apparatus.”

Little did he think…! Little did Manya think what was going to happen to her and physical apparatus, but she liked the odd sounding words and ran off chanting:

Phys-ˇ-cˇal áp-pˇar-á-tús.

Phys-ˇ-cˇal áp-pˇar-á-tús.