We had many servants in our large country house. They lived with us for a long time, especially the most important of them: the coachman, who so astonished us little ones when we once saw him eat an entire black radish; Panas, who was our head gardener and the village wise man; our elderly cook; the housekeeper; Bartek the footman; and Kornelia the chambermaid. These were all a part of the household, and they stayed with us for many years.

Bartek was a rather picturesque figure. Short, with a distinctive forelock. His walk and some of his other mannerisms were very like Charlie Chaplin’s, and he too was something of a comedian. I think he must have been with us a good ten years, since he appears in every one of my childhood memories. Yes, at least ten years, even though he was fired every year, always on Whit Monday.

“It’s his journée fatale,” my elder sister liked to pronounce.

Bartek could never get through this fateful day without running into trouble.

Much was expected of servants in those stricter times. Some of the transgressions for which poor Bartek was dismissed can hardly be described as serious.

I remember one occasion when he let a dish of rissoles crash to the floor. And there was the evening when he spilled a whole gravy boat down an elegant lady’s collar. I also remember him serving chicken to a particularly stout and self-important gentleman. Evidently not someone who liked to rush at things, this gentleman studied the pieces of chicken for a long time, wondering which to choose. All of a sudden, Bartek—who was wearing white cotton gloves—pointed daintily with his middle finger at a morsel he thought particularly tasty.

The gentleman looked up in some indignation.

“Blockhead! How dare you?”

It was Whit Monday, and Bartek was duly dismissed.

But I don’t think he was ever dismissed for long. He may, perhaps, have gone on living in some little shed behind the wing. Then he would come and ask for forgiveness and everything would go smoothly until the next Whitsun.

He was also famous for having once shot, plucked, roasted and eaten a whole crow. All purely out of scientific interest.

He loved telling our old nyanya about this,1 probably because the story really did make her feel very queasy.

“There’s nowt quite like it, my dear Nyanya. No, there’s no flesh so full o’ goodness like that of a crow. Brimful of satiety, and how! The ribs be a little sour, mind, the loins a little like human flesh. But the thighs—so rich, so dripping wi juice they are… After a meal of crow, it be a whole month till you next feel hunger. Aye, it’s three weeks nah since I last put food in me mouth.”

Nyanya gasped. “So you really… You well and truly ate a crow?” she would ask.

“That I did, Nyanya—and washed it dahn wi good strong water.”

The heroine of this tale, Kornelia the chambermaid, was another of these important, long-term servants. She was from a family of Polish gentry and some of her elegant mannerisms seemed affected. She was, therefore, known as the “Pannochka”—the Polish for “Mademoiselle”.

She had a plump, very pale face and bulging eyes. The eyes of a fish—yellow with black rims. Her fine eyebrows were like an arrow, cutting across her forehead and giving her a look of severity.

Kornelia’s hair was extraordinary. She had long plaits that hung down below her knees but which she piled up in a tight crown. All rather ugly and strange, especially since her hair was a pale, lacklustre brown.

Kornelia was slow and taciturn, secretly proud. She spoke little, but she was always humming to herself, through closed lips.

“Kornelia sings through her nose,” Lena and I used to say.

In the mornings she came to the nursery to comb our hair. Why she had assumed this responsibility was unclear. But she wielded the comb like a weapon.

“Ouch!” her victim would squeal. “Stop! Kornelia! That hurts!”

Calm and deliberate as ever, Kornelia just carried on, humming away, her nostrils flared and her lips pursed.

I remember Nyanya once saying to her, “What a slowpoke you are! For all I know, you could be asleep. You working or not?”

Kornelia looked at Nyanya with her usual severe expression and said in Polish, “Still waters break banks.”

She then turned on her heels and left the room.

Nyanya probably couldn’t make head or tail of these words, but she took offence all the same.

“Thinks she can scare me, does she? Coming out with gobbledygook like that—the woman’s just plain workshy!”

On Sundays, after an early lunch, Kornelia would put on her best woollen dress—always decorated with all kinds of frills and bows—and a little green necktie. She would slowly and carefully comb her hair, pin it up, throw a faded lace kerchief over her shoulders, tie a black velvet ribbon with a little silver icon around her neck, take her prayer book and rosary and go to a bench near the ice house. She would then solemnly sit down, straighten her skirt and begin to pray.

Lena and I were intrigued by Kornelia’s way of praying. We always followed her to the ice house and observed her for a long time, unabashed as only children and dogs can be.

She would whisper away to herself, telling the long oval beads of her rosary with her short, podgy fingers and looking piously up at the heavens. We could see the whites of her bulging eyes.

The hens bustled about and clucked. The cock pecked away crossly, right next to the Pannochka’s fine Sunday shoes. Rattling her keys and clattering her jugs, the housekeeper went in and out of the ice house. Aloof as ever, her pale, plump face plastered with face-cream, Kornelia seemed not to notice any of this. Her beads clicked quietly, her lips moved silently, and her eyes seemed to be contemplating something unearthly.

She ate her meals apart from the other servants, fetching a plateful of food from the kitchen and taking it to the maids’ room. Arching her neck like a trace horse, she always put her spoon into the right-hand corner of her mouth.

One summer, we arrived from Moscow to find all our servants present as usual, except that Kornelia was now living not in the maids’ room but in the little white annexe beside the laundry, right by the pond. We were told that she had married and was living with her husband, Pan Perkawski, who did not yet have a position on the estate.

Kornelia still came to do battle with our hair in the mornings and she still prayed on Sundays, now sitting outside her new home, where there was a sprawling old willow. One of its two trunks leaned over the pond; the other grew almost horizontally along its banks. It was on this second trunk that Kornelia now sat, her prayer book in her hands, her velvet ribbon around her neck and her skirt spread out decorously beneath her.

Her husband was nothing to write home about. Dull, pockmarked and—like Bartek—rather short. Most of the day he just hung about smoking. He’d acquired a chicken that he used to bathe in the pond. The chicken would struggle to get free, letting out heart-rending squawks and spattering him with water—but he was unflinching. Grunting and grimacing, with the air of a man who has sworn to fulfil his duty no matter what, he would plunge the chicken into the water. In other respects Pan Perkawski had little to distinguish him.

It was a rowdy and merry summer. There was a regiment of hussars stationed in the nearest town. The officers were frequent visitors to our house, which was always full of young ladies—my elder sisters, our girl cousins and a great many friends who had come to stay. There were picnics, expeditions on horseback, games and dances.

Lena and I did not take part in all this and we were always being sent away just as things were getting interesting. Nevertheless, we entirely agreed with the housekeeper that the squadron commander was a splendid fellow. He was short and bow-legged, and he had a moustache, a topknot and whiskers just like Alexander II. He would arrive in a carriage drawn by three frisky grey horses, caparisoned with long, colourful ribbons. On each side of the painted shaft bow was an inscription. On the front: “Rejoice, ladies—here comes your suitor!” On the back: “Weep—he is already married.”

The squadron commander was, in reality, a long way from being married. He was in a state of permanent infatuation, but with no one in particular. He offered his hand and his heart to each young lady in turn, took their refusals in his stride, entirely without resentment, and sped on to his next choice.

And he was not the only one to be in love. Love was the prevailing mood. Young officers sighed, brought bouquets and sheets of music, sang songs, recited poems and, narrowing their eyes, reproached the young ladies for their “be-eastly...