Mother

by Maxim Gorky

  “Stand up now, arise, working people!…”

  It was as if a huge brass trumpet were singing in the air, singing and rousing people, eliciting in one breast a readiness for battle, in another an indistinct joy, a presentiment of something new, burning curiosity, here exciting a vague tremor of hope, there opening an outlet for a caustic stream of anger, accumulated over years. Everyone was peering ahead to where the red banner swayed and fluttered in the air.

  “Let’s go!” roared someone’s rapturous voice. “Splendid, lads!”

  And evidently feeling something big, that he could not express in ordinary words, a man swore, using strong, bad language. But anger too, the dark, blind anger of the slave, hissed like a snake and writhed in angry words, disturbed by the light that had fallen on it.

  “Heretics!” cried a cracked voice, shaking a fist.

  And somebody’s whining squeal stole importunately into the mother’s ears:

  “Against the Sovereign Emperor, against His Majesty the Tsar? Rebelling?”

  Troubled faces flashed past the mother, bobbing up and down; men and women ran by; the people poured in a stream of dark lava, drawn by this song which, with the pressure of its sounds, seemed to be overturning everything before it, clearing the way. Gazing at the red banner in the distance, she could see, without seeing it, the face of her son, his bronzed forehead and his eyes, burning with the bright fire of faith.

  But now she was at the tail of the crowd, among people who walked unhurriedly, peering ahead indifferently with the cold curiosity of spectators who know the end of the spectacle in advance. They walked and talked in low voices, confidently:

  “There’s one company by the school, and another by the factory…”

  “The Governor’s here…”

  “Really?”

  “I saw him myself – he’s here!”

  Someone swore joyfully and said:

  “They’ve started to be afraid of the likes of us, though! The army and the Governor.”

  “My dears!” went the beat in the mother’s heart.

  But the words around her sounded dead and cold. She quickened her step to get away from these people, and it was easy for her to overtake their slow, lazy pace.

  And suddenly it was as if the head of the crowd had struck against something, and its body, without stopping, rocked back with an anxious, quiet rumbling. The song shuddered too, then poured out quicker and louder. But again the dense wave of sounds sank, crept backwards. One after another, voices dropped out of the choir, and individual cries rang out, attempting to raise the song to its former height and push it forward:

  “Stand up now, arise, working people!

  Advance on the foe, hungry folk!…”

  But there was no shared, united certainty in this call, and already aquiver in it was alarm.

  Not seeing anything, not knowing what had happened up ahead, the mother pushed the crowd aside, moving quickly forward, but people were coming back towards her, some with bowed heads and knitted brows, others smiling bashfully, still others whistling derisively. She examined their faces anxiously, and her eyes were silently enquiring, requesting, calling…

  “Comrades!” Pavel’s voice rang out. “Soldiers are people just like us. They won’t hit us. Why hit us? Because we have the truth everyone needs? But they too need that truth. They don’t understand it for the moment, but the time is already nigh when they too will stand alongside us, when they’ll march not under the banner of robbery and murder, but under our banner of freedom. And so that they should understand our truth the quicker, we should go forward. Forward, comrades! Ever forward!”

  Pavel’s voice sounded firm, the words rang in the air, distinct and clear, but the crowd was disintegrating, one after another people were going off to right and left towards the houses, leaning against fences. The crowd was now in the form of a wedge, whose point was Pavel, and burning red above his head was the banner of the working people. And the crowd resembled a black bird too – with its wings spread wide, it was on its guard, ready to rise up and fly, and Pavel was its beak…

  XXVIII

  At the end of the street, the mother saw, there stood a grey wall of homogeneous people without faces closing the way out into the square. Shining cold and thin above the shoulder of each of them were the sharp stripes of bayonets. And coming at the workers from that silent and motionless wall was a breath of cold, which pressed up against the mother’s chest and penetrated into her heart.

  She squeezed into the crowd to where people familiar to her, standing ahead by the banner, were mingling with unfamiliar ones, as though for support. She pressed her side up tight against a tall, clean-shaven man; he was one-eyed, and turned his head sharply to look at her:

  “What are you doing? Who do you belong to?” he asked.

  “I’m Pavel Vlasov’s mother!” she replied, feeling her knees trembling and her lower lip involuntarily dropping.

  “Aha!” said the one-eyed man.

  “Comrades!” said Pavel. “Forward all our lives – we have no other path!”

  All became quiet and sentient. The banner rose, swayed and, fluttering pensively above the people’s heads, moved smoothly towards the grey wall of soldiers. The mother flinched, closed her eyes and gasped – Pavel, Andrei, Samoilov and Mazin, just the four of them, had broken away from the crowd.

  And slowly the bright voice of Fedya Mazin began to quaver in the air:

  “A victim, you fell…*”

  he began to sing.

  “…in the battle… most dread…”

  responded rich, lowered voices in two heavy sighs. The men stepped forward, striking the ground with their feet in a staccato rhythm. And the new song began to flow, decisive and determined.

  “You gave ev’rything that you could for them all…”

  Fedya’s voice meandered in a bright ribbon.

  “…for freedom…”

  his comrades sang in concert.

  “Aha-a!” somebody to one side shouted gloatingly. “They’ve started singing the requiem, the sons of bitches!…”

  “Thump him!” rang out an irate cry.

  The mother clutched at her breast with both hands, looked around and saw that the crowd, which had filled the street densely before, stood now indecisive, vacillating and watching the men with the banner move away from it. A few dozen followed them, and every step forward made someone leap aside, as though the path down the middle of the street were red-hot and burning the soles of people’s feet.

  “The tyrants will fall…”

  prophesied the song on Fedya’s lips.

  “…and the people will rise!…”

  a choir of strong voices, certain and stern, sang the second part back to him.

  But quiet words were breaking through the song’s harmonious flow:

  “He’s giving orders…”

  “On guard!” rang out up ahead in a sharp cry.

  The bayonets swayed sinuously in the air, fell and stretched themselves out towards the banner, smiling slyly.

  “Forward march!”

  “Let’s go!” said the one-eyed man, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took a big step to the side.

  The mother watched unblinking. The grey wave of soldiers surged and, stretching out to the entire width of the street, moved off evenly and coldly, carrying before it a sparse comb of silvery, glittering teeth of steel. Taking long strides, she drew closer to her son, and she saw Andrei, too, take a step ahead of Pavel and screen him with his long body.

  “March beside me, comrade!” cried Pavel sharply.

  Andrei was singing, his hands were clasped behind his back, and he had tilted his head up. Pavel nudged him with his shoulder and cried again:

  “Beside me! You have no right! In front is the banner!”

  “Di-isperse!” cried
a little officer in a shrill voice, brandishing a white sabre. He raised his legs high and, with knees unbending, stamped his soles boldly on the ground. The mother was struck by his brightly polished boots.

  And to one side, a little behind him, there marched with a heavy step a strapping, shaven-headed man with thick, grey whiskers wearing a long, grey coat with a red lining and with yellow stripes down the sides of his wide trousers. He too, like the Ukrainian, had his hands behind his back; he had raised his thick grey eyebrows high and was looking at Pavel.

  The mother saw an immense amount, and motionless in her breast was a loud cry which, with every sigh, was ready to burst out to freedom and was choking her, but which she contained, clutching at her breast with her hands. She was pushed, and she rocked on her feet, walking forward without any thought, almost unconscious. She sensed there were ever fewer people behind her as the cold wave came towards them and scattered them.

  Ever closer together moved the men of the red banner and the solid chain of grey men, and the face of the soldiers was clearly visible, as wide as the entire street, hideously squashed into a narrow, dirty yellow stripe in which there was an uneven sprinkling of multicoloured eyes, and ahead of which the slim spikes of the bayonets sparkled cruelly. Directed at the people’s chests, even without having touched them, they were destroying the crowd by chipping away one person after another.

  The mother heard the patter of people running behind her. Dispirited, anxious voices cried:

  “Disperse, lads…”

  “Vlasov, run!…”

  “Get back, Pavlukha!”

  “Drop the banner, Pavel!” said Vesovshchikov gloomily. “Give it here – I’ll hide it!”

  He grabbed at the staff with his hand and the banner rocked back.

  “Leave it alone!” cried Pavel.

  Nikolai jerked his hand back as though it had been scalded. The song died away. People stopped, packing solidly around Pavel, but he fought his way forward. Silence fell, suddenly, all at once, as though it had descended unseen from above and enveloped everyone in a transparent cloud.

  Some twenty people stood beneath the banner, no more, but they stood firm, drawing the mother towards them through her sensation of fear for them and her vague desire to say something to them…

  “Take that away from him, Lieutenant!” the steady voice of the tall old man rang out.

  Stretching his arm forward, he pointed to the banner.

  The little officer went running up to Pavel, grabbed at the staff with one hand and cried in a shrill voice:

  “Drop it!”

  “Hands off!” said Pavel loudly.

  The banner trembled redly in the air, bent to the right and to the left, and then again stood erect; the little officer flew back and sat down on the ground. Nikolai slipped past the mother with uncharacteristic speed, holding his outstretched arm with his fist clenched before him.

  “Take them!” the old man roared, stamping his foot on the ground.

  Several soldiers leapt forward. One of them swung his rifle butt, and the banner shuddered, bowed down and disappeared in a grey knot of soldiers.

  “Oh!” cried someone miserably.

  And the mother cried out with a bestial, howling noise. But Pavel’s clear voice rang out to her from the crowd of soldiers in reply:

  “Goodbye, Mama! Goodbye, dear…”

  “He’s alive! He’s thought of me!” were two beats of the mother’s heart.

  “Goodbye, my nenko!”

  Standing up on tiptoe and waving her arms, she tried to catch sight of them and did see Andrei’s round face above the heads of the soldiers – it was smiling, it was bowing to her.

  “My dears… Andryusha!… Pasha!…” she cried.

  “Goodbye, comrades!” they cried out of the crowd of soldiers.

  They were answered by a repeated, ragged echo whose response came from windows, from somewhere up above, from roofs.

  XXIX

  She was pushed in the chest. She saw through the mist in her eyes before her the little officer; his face was red and strained, and he was shouting at her:

  “Be off, woman!”

  She looked at him from head to toe and saw at his feet the staff of the banner, broken in two, and on one part a piece of red material was still intact. Bending down, she picked it up. The officer ripped the pole from her hands, threw it aside and, stamping his feet, shouted:

  “Be off, I say!”

  From among the soldiers a song flared up and began to flow:

  “Stand up now, arise, working people…”

  Everything was spinning, swaying, shuddering. There was a deep, alarming noise in the air, like the dull noise of telegraph wires. The officer leapt back, screaming in irritation:

  “Stop that singing! Sergeant-Major Krainov…”

  Staggering, the mother went up to the fragment of staff he had thrown down and picked it up once again.

  “Shut their mouths for them!…”

  The song faltered, quavered, broke off, died away. Someone took the mother by the shoulders, turned her around and pushed her in the back…

  “Go on, go on…”

  “Clear the street!” cried the officer.

  A dozen paces away from her the mother saw a crowd of people, dense once again. They were growling, grumbling, whistling and, slowly retreating into the depths of the street, spilling away into yards.

  “Go on, you devil!” a young soldier with a moustache shouted right in her ear as he drew level with her, and he pushed her onto the pavement.

  She set off, leaning on the staff and with her legs buckling. So as not to fall, she clutched with her other hand at walls and fences. In front of her people were backing away, beside her and behind her marched soldiers, shouting:

  “Go on, go on…”

  The soldiers overtook her, and she stopped and looked back. They were standing in a sparse chain at the end of the street too, soldiers, blocking the way out into the square. The square was empty. Grey figures swayed up ahead as well, moving slowly towards the people…

  She meant to turn back, but unaccountably went forward once more and, on reaching a side street, narrow and deserted, turned into it.

  She stopped once more. She heaved a heavy sigh and listened. Somewhere up ahead there was the hum of people.

  Leaning on the staff, she began striding forward, suddenly sweating, twitching her eyebrows, moving her lips, waving an arm, and some words flared up like sparks in her heart, flared up, jostling, igniting an insistent, powerful desire to say them, to shout out…

  The lane turned sharply to the left, and around the corner the mother caught sight of a large, tight knot of people; someone’s voice, loud and powerful, was saying:

  “You don’t keep going towards bayonets, brothers, not for the sake of a bit of mischief!”

  “How about them, eh? Soldiers coming towards them, but they just stand there! Stand there, my brothers, without fear…”

  “That’s Pasha Vlasov for you!…”

  “And what about the Ukrainian?”

  “Hands behind his back and smiling, the devil…”

  “My dears! People!” the mother cried, squeezing into the crowd. They stepped aside respectfully before her. Someone laughed.

  “Look, she’s got the flag! That’s the flag in her hand!”

  “Be quiet!” said another voice sternly.

  The mother spread her arms wide…

  “Listen, for Christ’s sake! All of you are dear… all of you are warm-hearted… look without fear – what’s happened? The children are marching through the world, our own blood marching for the truth… for everyone! For all of you, for your babies, they have condemned themselves to the Way of the Cross…* they seek bright days… They want another life in truth, in justice… they want goodness for all!”

>   Her heart was bursting, her breast was tight, her throat was dry and hot. Being born deep inside her were words of great love that embraced everything and everyone, and they were burning her tongue, moving it ever more powerfully, ever more freely.

  She saw they were listening to her, they were all silent; she sensed the people tightly packed around her were thinking, and a desire grew within her – now already clear to her – a desire to push people in that direction, after her son, after Andrei, after all who had been handed over to the soldiers and left on their own.

  Scanning the glum, attentive faces around her, she continued with gentle power:

  “Our children are marching through the world towards joy, they’ve set off for the sake of everyone and for the sake of Christ’s truth against everything that our vicious, false and greedy people have used to take us captive, bind and crush us! My warm-hearted men, it’s for the entire people that our young blood has risen, you know, it’s for the entire world, for all working people that they’ve set off!… So don’t draw back from them, don’t renounce them, don’t leave your children on a lonely path. Take pity on yourselves… have faith in the hearts of your sons – they’ve given birth to the truth, and for the truth’s sake they’re perishing. Have faith in them!”

  Her voice broke and, grown weak, she swayed, but someone held her up by the arms…

  “It’s God’s word she’s talking!” someone cried in an agitated, muffled voice. “God’s word, good people! Listen!”

  Another felt sorry for her:

  “Dear me, how she’s beating herself up!”

  He met with disagreement and a reproof:

  “She’s not beating herself up, she’s battering us fools – get that clear!”

  A high, tremulous voice soared up above the crowd:

  “Christians! My Mitya, an innocent soul, what did he do? He followed his comrades, those he loved… What she says is true – why are we abandoning the children? What harm have they done us?”

  The mother started to tremble at these words and responded with quiet tears.