The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

“Eh, mate, you’ve been on the spree, one can see!” he said to Chelkash, pulling at his trousers.

  “That’s so, suckling, that’s so indeed!” Chelkash admitted frankly; he took at once to this healthy, simple-hearted youth, with his childish clear eyes. “Been off mowing, eh?”

  “To be sure! You’ve to mow a verst to earn ten kopecks! It’s a poor business! Folks—in masses! Men had come tramping from the famine parts. They’ve knocked down the prices, go where you will. Sixty kopecks they paid in Kuban. And in years gone by, they do say, it was three, and four, and five roubles.”

  “In years gone by! Why, in years gone by, for the mere sight of a Russian they paid three roubles out that way. Ten years ago I used to make a regular trade of it. One would go to a settlement—‘I’m a Russian,’ one said—and they’d come and gaze at you at once, touch you, wonder at you, and—you’d get three roubles. And they’d give you food and drink—stay as long as you like!”

  As the youth listened to Chelkash, at first his mouth dropped open, his round face expressing bewildered rapture; then, grasping the fact that this tattered fellow was romancing, he closed his lips with a smack and guffawed. Chelkash kept a serious face, hiding a smile in his mustache.

  “You funny chap, you chaff away as though it were the truth, and I listen as if it were a bit of news! No, upon my soul, in years gone by—”

  “Why, and didn’t I say so? To be sure, I’m telling you how in years gone by—”

  “Go on!” the lad waved his hand. “A cobbler, eh? or a tailor? or what are you?”

  “I?” Chelkash queried, and after a moment’s thought he said: “I’m a fisherman.”

  “A fisherman! Really? You catch fish?”

  “Why fish? Fishermen about here don’t catch fish only. They fish more for drowned men, old anchors, sunk ships—everything! There are hooks on purpose for all that.”

  “Go on! That sort of fishermen, maybe, that sing of themselves:

  “We cast our nets Over banks that are dry, Over storerooms and pantries!”

  “Why, have you seen any of that sort?” inquired Chelkash, looking scoffingly at him and thinking that this nice youth was very stupid.

  “No, seen them I haven’t! I’ve heard tell.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Like them? May be. They’re all right, fine bold chaps—free.”

  “And what’s freedom to you? Do you care for freedom?”

  “Well, I should think so! Be your own master, go where you please, do as you like. To be sure! If you know how to behave yourself, and you’ve nothing weighing upon you—it’s first rate. Enjoy yourself all you can, only be mindful of God.”

  Chelkash spat contemptuously, and turning away from the youth, dropped the conversation.

  “Here’s my case now,” the latter began, with sudden animation. “As my father’s dead, my bit of land’s small, my mother’s old, all the land’s sucked dry, what am I to do? I must live. And how? There’s no telling.

  “Am I to marry into some well-to-do house? I’d be glad to, if only they’d let their daughter have her share apart.

  “Not a bit of it, the devil of a father-in-law won’t consent to that. And so I shall have to slave for him—for ever so long—for years. A nice state of things, you know!

  “But if I could earn a hundred or a hundred and fifty roubles, I could stand on my own feet, and look askance at old Antip, and tell him straight out! Will you give Marfa her share apart? No? all right, then! Thank God, she’s not the only girl in the village. And I should be, I mean, quite free and independent.

  “Ah, yes!” the young man sighed. “But as ’tis, there’s nothing for it, but to marry and live at my father-in-law’s. I was thinking I’d go, d’ye see, to Kuban, and make some two hundred roubles-straight off! Be a gentleman! But there, it was no go! It didn’t come off. Well, I suppose I’ll have to work for my father-in-law! Be a day-laborer. For I’ll never manage on my own bit—not anyhow. Heigh-ho!”

  The lad extremely disliked the idea of bondage to his future father-in-law. His face positively darkened and looked gloomy. He shifted clumsily on the ground and drew Chelkash out of the reverie into which he had sunk during his speech.

  Chelkash felt that he had no inclination now to talk to him, yet he asked him another question: “Where are you going now?”

  “Why, where should I go? Home, to be sure.”

  “Well, mate, I couldn’t be sure of that, you might be on your way to Turkey.”

  “To Th-urkey!” drawled the youth. “Why, what good Christian ever goes there! Well I never!”

  “Oh, you fool!” sighed Chelkash, and again he turned away from his companion, conscious this time of a positive disinclination to waste another word on him. This stalwart village lad roused some feeling in him. It was a vague feeling of annoyance, that grew instinctively, stirred deep down in his heart, and hindered him from concentrating himself on the consideration of all that he had to do that night.

  The lad he had thus reviled muttered something, casting occasionally a dubious glance at Chelkash. His cheeks were comically puffed out, his lips parted, and his eyes were screwed up and blinking with extreme rapidity. He had obviously not expected so rapid and insulting a termination to his conversation with this long-whiskered ragamuffin. The ragamuffin took no further notice of him. He whistled dreamily, sitting on the stone post, and beating time on it with his bare, dirty heel.

  The young peasant wanted to be quits with him.

  “Hi, you there, fisherman! Do you often get tipsy like this?” he was beginning, but at the same instant the fisherman turned quickly towards him, and asked:

  “I say, suckling! Would you like a job tonight with me? Eh? Tell me quickly!”

  “What sort of a job?” the lad asked him, distrustfully.

  “What! What I set you. We’re going fishing. You’ll row the boat.”

  “Well. Yes. All right. I don’t mind a job. Only there’s this. I don’t want to get into a mess with you. You’re so awfully deep. You’re rather shady.”

  Chelkash felt a scalding sensation in his breast, and with cold anger he said in a low voice:

  “And you’d better hold your tongue, whatever you think, or I’ll give you a tap on your nut that will make things light enough.”

  He jumped up from his post, tugged at his moustache with his left hand, while his sinewy right hand was clenched into a fist, hard as iron, and his eyes gleamed.

  The youth was frightened. He looked quickly round him, and blinking uneasily, he, too, jumped up from the ground. Measuring one another with their eyes, they paused.

  “Well?” Chelkash queried, sullenly. He was boiling inwardly, and trembling at the affront dealt him by this young calf, whom he had despised while he talked to him, but now hated all at once because he had such clear blue eyes, such health, a sunburned face, and broad, strong hands; because he had somewhere a village, a home in it, because a well-to-do peasant wanted him for a son-in-law, because of all his life, past and future, and most of all, because he—this babe compared with Chelkash—dared to love freedom, which he could not appreciate, nor need. It is always unpleasant to see that a man one regards as baser or lower than oneself likes or hates the same things, and so puts himself on a level with oneself.

  The young peasant looked at Chelkash and saw in him an employer.

  “Well,” he began, “I don’t mind. I’m glad of it. Why, it’s work for, you or any other man. I only meant that you don’t look like a working man—a bit too-ragged. Oh, I know that may happen to anyone. Good Lord, as though I’ve never seen drunkards! Lots of them! and worse than you too.”

  “All right, all right! Then you agree?” Chelkash said more amicably.

  “I? Ye-es! With pleasure! Name your terms.”

  “That’s according to the job. As the job turns out. According to the job.
Five roubles you may get. Do you see?”

  But now it was a question of money, and in that the peasant wished to be precise, and demanded the same exactness from his employer. His distrust and suspicion revived.

  “That’s not my way of doing business, mate! A bird in the hand for me.”

  Chelkash threw himself into his part.

  “Don’t argue, wait a bit! Come into the restaurant.”

  And they went down the street side by side, Chelkash with the dignified air of an employer, twisting his mustaches, the youth with an expression of absolute readiness to give way to him, but yet full of distrust and uneasiness.

  “And what’s your name?” asked Chelkash.

  “Gavrilo!” answered the youth.

  When they had come into the dirty and smoky eating-house, and Chelkash going up to the counter, in the familiar tone of an habitual customer, ordered a bottle of vodka, cabbage soup, a cut from the joint, and tea, and reckoning up his order, flung the waiter a brief “put it all down!” to which the waiter nodded in silence,—Gavrilo was at once filled with respect for this ragamuffin, his employer, who enjoyed here such an established and confident position.

  “Well, now we’ll have a bit of lunch and talk things over. You sit still, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He went out. Gavrilo looked round. The restaurant was in an underground basement; it was damp and dark, and reeked with the stifling fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another table sat a drunken man in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, all over coal-dust and tar. Hiccupping every minute, he was droning a song all made up of broken and incoherent words, strangely sibilant and guttural sounds. He was unmistakably not a Russian.

  Behind him sat two Moldavian women, tattered, black-haired sunburned creatures, who were chanting some sort of song, too, with drunken voices.

  And from the darkness beyond emerged other figures, all strangely dishevelled, all half-drunk, noisy and restless.

  Gavrilo felt miserable here alone. He longed for his employer to come back quickly. And the din in the eating-house got louder and louder. Growing shriller every second, it all melted into one note, and it seemed like the roaring of some monstrous boast, with hundreds of different throats, vaguely enraged, trying to struggle out of this damp hole and unable to find a way out to freedom.

  Gavrilo felt something intoxicating and oppressive creeping over him, over all his limbs, making his head reel, and his eyes grow dim, as they moved inquisitively about the eating-house.

  Chelkash came in, and they began eating and drinking and talking. At the third glass Gavrilo was drunk. He became lively and wanted to say something pleasant to his employer, who—the good fellow!—though he had done nothing for him yet, was entertaining him so agreeably. But the words which flowed in perfect waves to his throat, for some reason would not come from his tongue.

  Chelkash looked at him and smiled sarcastically, saying:

  “You’re screwed! Ugh—milksop!—with five glasses! how will you work?”

  “Dear fellow!” Gavrilo melted into a drunken, good-natured smile. “Never fear! I respect you! That is, look here! Let me kiss you! eh?”

  “Come, come! A drop more!”

  Gavrilo drank, and at last reached a condition when everything seemed waving up and down in regular undulations before his eyes. It was unpleasant and made him feel sick. His face wore an expression of childish bewilderment and foolish enthusiasm. Trying to say something, he smacked his lips absurdly and bellowed. Chelkash, watching him intently, twisted his mustaches, and as though recollecting something, still smiled to himself, but morosely now and maliciously.

  The eating-house roared with drunken clamor. The red-headed sailor was asleep, with his elbows on the table.

  “Come, let’s go then!” said Chelkash, getting up.

  Gavrilo tried to get up, but could not, and with a vigorous oath, he laughed a meaningless, drunken laugh.

  “Quite screwed!” said Chelkash, sitting down again opposite him.

  Gavrilo still guffawed, staring with dull eyes at his new employer. And the latter gazed at him intently, vigilantly and thoughtfully. He saw before him a man whose life had fallen into his wolfish clutches. He, Chelkash, felt that he had the power to do with it as he pleased. He could rend it like a card, and he could help to set it on a firm footing in its peasant framework. He reveled in feeling himself master of another man, and thought that never would this peasant-lad drink of such a cup as destiny had given him, Chelkash, to drink. And he envied this young life and pitied it, sneered at it, and was even troubled over it, picturing to himself how it might again fall into such hands as his.

  And all these feelings in the end melted in Chelkash into one—a fatherly sense of proprietorship in him. He felt sorry for the boy, and the boy was necessary to him. Then Chelkash took Gavrilo under the arms, and giving him a slight shove behind with his knee, got him out into the yard of the eating-house, where he put him on the ground in the shade of a stack of wood, then he sat down beside him and lighted his pipe.

  Gavrilo shifted about a little, muttered, and dropped asleep.

  CHAPTER II.

  “Come, ready?” Chelkash asked in a low voice of Gavrilo, who was busy doing something to the oars.

  “In a minute! The rowlock here’s unsteady, can I just knock it in with the oar?”

  “No—no! Not a sound! Push it down harder with your hand, it’ll go in of itself.”

  They were both quietly getting out a boat, which was tied to the stern of one of a whole flotilla of oakladen barges, and big Turkish feluccas, half unloaded, hall still full of palm-oil, sandal wood, and thick trunks of cypress.

  The night was dark, thick strata of ragged clouds were moving across the sky, and the sea was quiet, black, and thick as oil. It wafted a damp and salt aroma, and splashed caressingly on the sides of the vessels and the banks, setting Chelkash’s boat lightly rocking. There were boats all round them. At a long distance from the shore rose from the sea the dark outlines of vessels, thrusting up into the dark sky their pointed masts with various colored lights at their tops. The sea reflected the lights, and was spotted with masses of yellow, quivering patches. This was very beautiful on the velvety bosom of the soft, dull black water, so rhythmically, mightily breathing. The sea slept the sound, healthy sleep of a workman, wearied out by his day’s toil.

  “We’re off!” said Gavrilo, dropping the oars into the water.

  “Yes!” With a vigorous turn of the rudder Chelkash drove the boat into a strip of water between two barks, and they darted rapidly over the smooth surface, that kindled into bluish phosphorescent light under the strokes of the oars. Behind the boat’s stern lay a winding ribbon of this phosphorescence, broad and quivering.

  “Well, how’s your head, aching?” asked Chelkash, smiling.

  “Awfully! Like iron ringing. I’ll wet it with some water in a minute.”

  “Why? You’d better wet your inside, that may get rid of it. You can do that at once.” He held out a bottle to Gavrilo.

  “Eh? Lord bless you!”

  There was a faint sound of swallowing.

  “Aye! aye! like it? Enough!” Chelkash stopped him.

  The boat darted on again, noiselessly and lightly threading its way among the vessels. All at once, they emerged from the labyrinth of ships, and the sea, boundless, mute, shining and rhythmically breathing, lay open before them, stretching far into the distance, where there rose out of its waters masses of storm clouds, some lilac-blue with fluffy yellow edges, and some greenish like the color of the seawater, or those dismal, leaden-colored clouds that cast such heavy, dreary shadows, oppressing mind and soul. They crawled slowly after one another, one melting into another, one overtaking another, and there was something weird in this slow procession of soulless masses.

  It seemed as though there,
at the sea’s rim, they were a countless multitude, that they would forever crawl thus sluggishly over the sky, striving with dull malignance to hinder it from peeping at the sleeping sea with its millions of golden eyes, the various colored, vivid stars, that shine so dreamily and stir high hopes in all who love their pure, holy light. Over the sea hovered the vague, soft sound of its drowsy breathing.

  “The sea’s fine, eh?” asked Chelkash.

  “It’s all right! Only I feel scared on it,” answered Gavrilo, pressing the oars vigorously and evenly through the water. The water faintly gurgled and splashed under the strokes of his long oars, splashed glittering with the warm, bluish, phosphorescent light.

  “Scared! What a fool!” Chelkash muttered, discontentedly.

  He, the thief and cynic, loved the sea. His effervescent, nervous nature, greedy after impressions, was never weary of gazing at that dark expanse, boundless, free, and mighty. And it hurt him to hear such an answer to his question about the beauty of what he loved. Sitting in the stern, he cleft the water with his oar, and looked on ahead quietly, filled with desire to glide far on this velvety surface, not soon to quit it.

  On the sea there always rose up in him a broad, warm feeling, that took possession of his whole soul, and somewhat purified it from the sordidness of daily life. He valued this, and loved to feel himself better out here in the midst of the water and the air, where the cares of life, and life itself, always lose, the former their keenness, the latter its value.

  “But where’s the tackle? Eh?” Gavrilo asked suspiciously all at once, peering into the boat.

  Chelkash started.

  “Tackle? I’ve got it in the stern.”

  “Why, what sort of tackle is it?” Gavrilo inquired again with surprised suspicion in his tone.

  “What sort? lines and—” But Chelkash felt ashamed to lie to this boy, to conceal his real plans, and he was sorry to lose what this peasant-lad had destroyed in his heart by this question. He flew into a rage. That scalding bitterness he knew so well rose in his breast and his throat, and impressively, cruelly, and malignantly he said to Gavrilo: