The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  And, should one turn to glance up the defile, it could be seen to grow narrower and narrower as it ascended towards the mists, and the latter to grow thicker and thicker until the whole defile was swathed in a dark blue pall. Higher yet there could be discerned the brilliant gleam of blue sky. Higher yet one could distinguish the ice-capped peak of Kara Dagh, floating and dissolving amid the ( from here) invisible sunlight. Highest of all again brooded the serene, steadfast peace of heaven.

  Also, everything was bathed in a strange tint of bluish grey: to which circumstance must have been due the fact that always one’s soul felt filled with restlessness, one’s heart stirred to disquietude, and fired as with intoxication, charged with incomprehensible thoughts, and conscious as of a summons to set forth for some unknown destination.

  * * * *

  The foreman of the carpenters shaded his eyes to gaze in our direction; and as he did so, he drawled and rasped out in tedious fashion:

  “Some shall to the left be sent,

  And in the pit of Hell lie pent.

  While others, holding palm in hand,

  Shall on God’s right take up their stand.”

  “Did you hear that?” the ex-soldier growled through clenched teeth. “‘Palm in hand’ indeed! Why, the fellow must be a Mennonite or a Molokan, though the two, really, are one, and absolutely indistinguishable, as well as equally foolish. Yes, ‘palm in hand’ indeed!”

  Similarly could I understand the ex-soldier’s indignation, for, like him, I felt that such dreary, monotonous singing was altogether out of place in a spot where everything could troll a song so delightful as to lead one to wish to hear nothing more, to hear only the whispering of the forest and the babbling of the stream. And especially out of place did the terms “palm” and “Mennonite” appear.

  Yet I had no great love for the ex-soldier. Somehow he jarred upon me. Middle-aged, squat, square, and bleached with the sun, he had faded eyes, flattened-out features, and an expression of restless moroseness. Never could I make out what he really wanted, what he was really seeking. For instance, once, after reviewing the Caucasus from Khassav-Urt to Novorossisk, and from Batum to Derbent, and, during the review, crossing the mountain range by three different routes at least, he remarked with a disparaging smile:

  “I suppose the Lord God made the country.”

  “You do not like it, then? How should I? Good for nothing is what I call it.”

  Then, with a further glance at me, and a twist of his sinewy neck, he added:

  “However, not bad altogether are its forests.”

  A native of Kaluga, he had served in Tashkend, and, in fighting with the Chechintzes of that region, had been wounded in the head with a stone. Yet as he told me the story of this incident, he smiled shamefacedly, and, throughout, kept his glassy eyes fixed upon the ground.

  “Though I am ashamed to confess it,” he said, “once a woman chipped a piece out of me. You see, the women of that region are shrieking devils—there is no other word for it; and when we captured a village called Akhal-Tiapa a number of them had to be cut up, so that they lay about in heaps, and their blood made walking slippery. Just as our company of the reserve entered the street, something caught me on the head. Afterwards, I learnt that a woman on a roof had thrown a stone, and, like the rest, had had to be put out of the way.”

  Here, knitting his brows, the ex-soldier went on in more serious vein:

  “Yet all that folk used to say about those women, about their having beards to shave, turned out to be so much gossip, as I ascertained for myself. I did so by lifting the woman’s skirt on the point of my bayonet, when I perceived that, though she was lean, and smelt like a goat, she was quite as regular as, as—”

  “Things must have been indeed terrible on that expedition!” I interposed.

  “I do not know for certain, since, though men who took an actual part in the expedition’s engagements have said that they were so (the Chechintze is a vicious brute, and never gives in), I myself know but little of the affair, since I spent my whole time in the reserve, and never once did my company advance to the assault. No, it merely lay about on the sand, and fired at long range. In fact, nothing but sand was to be seen thereabouts; nor did we ever succeed in finding out what the fighting was for. True, if a piece of country be good, it is in our interest to take it; but in the present case the country was poor and bare, with never a river in sight, and a climate so hot that all one thought of was one’s mortal need of a drink. In fact, some of our fellows died of thirst outright. Moreover, in those parts there grows a sort of millet called dzhugar—millet which not only has a horrible taste, but proves absolutely delusive, since the more one eats of it, the less one feels filled.”

  As the ex-soldier told me the tale colourlessly and reluctantly, with frequent pauses between the sentences (as though either he found it difficult to recall the experience or he were thinking of something else), he never once looked me straight in the face, but kept his eyes shamefacedly fixed upon the ground.

  Unwieldily and unhealthily stout, he always conveyed to me the impression of being charged with a vague discontent, a sort of captious inertia.

  “Absolutely unfit for settlement is this country” he continued as he glanced around him. “It is fit only to do nothing in. For that matter, one doesn’t want to do anything in it, save to live with one’s eyes bulging like a drunkard’s—for the climate is too hot, and the place smells like a chemist’s shop or a hospital.”

  Nevertheless, for the past eight years had he been roaming this “too hot” country, as though fascinated!

  “Why not return to Riazan?” I suggested.

  “Nothing would there be there for me to do,” he replied through his teeth, and with an odd division of his words.

  My first encounter with him had been at the railway station at Armavir, where, purple in the face with excitement, he had been stamping like a horse, and, with distended eyes, hissing, or, rather, snarling, at a couple of Greeks:

  “I’ll tear the flesh from your bones!”

  Meanwhile the two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar denizens of Hellas had been baring their sharp white teeth at intervals, and saying apologetically:

  “What has angered you, sir?”

  Finally, regardless of the Greeks’ words, the ex-soldier had beat his breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased venom:

  “Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good foster-mother. I expect you say the same.”

  And, lastly, he had approached a fat, grey-headed, bemedalled gendarme, and complained to him:

  “Everyone curses us born Russians, yet everyone comes to live with us—Greeks, Germans, Songs, and the lot. And while they get their livelihood here, and cat and drink their fill, they continue to curse us. A scandal, is it not?”

  * * * *

  The third member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore a Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock, rounded features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse lip. When the volatile young engineering student first brought him to us and said, “Here is another man for you,” the newcomer glanced at me through the lashes of his elusive eyes—then plunged his hands into the pockets of his Turkish overalls. Just as we were departing, however, he withdrew one hand from the left trouser pocket, passed it slowly over the dark bristles of his unshaven chin, and asked in musical tones:

  “Do you come from Russia?”

  “Whence else, I should like to know?” snapped the ex-soldier gruffly.

  Upon this the newcomer twisted his right-hand moustache then replaced his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and well-built throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is accustomed to cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought neither wallet nor gripsack, and somehow his su
percilious, retrousse upper lip and thickly fringed eyes irritated me, and inclined me to be suspicious of, and even actively to dislike, the man.

  Suddenly, while we were proceeding along the causeway by the side of the rivulet, he turned to us, and said, as he nodded towards the sportively coursing water:

  “Look at the matchmaker!”

  The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around him for a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:

  “The fool!”

  But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little river did indeed resemble some fussy, light-hearted old lady who loved to arrange affaires du coeur both for her own private amusement and for the purpose of enabling other folk to realise the joys of affection amid which she was living, and of which she would never grow weary, and to which she desired to introduce the rest of the world as speedily as possible.

  Similarly, when we arrived at the barraque this man with the Cossack face glanced at the rivulet, and then at the mountains and the sky, and, finally, appraised the scene in one pregnant, comprehensive exclamation of “Slavno!” [How splendid!]

  The ex-soldier, who was engaged in ridding himself of his knapsack, straightened himself, and asked with his arms set akimbo:

  “What is it that is so splendid?”

  For a moment or two the newcomer merely eyed the squat figure of his questioner—a figure upon which hung drab shreds as lichen hangs upon a stone. Then he said with a smile:

  “Cannot you see for yourself? Take that mountain there, and that cleft in the mountain—are they not good to look at?”

  And as he moved away, the ex-soldier gaped after him with a repeated whisper of:

  “The fool!”

  To which presently he added in a louder, as well as a mysterious, tone:

  “I have heard that occasionally they send fever patients hither for their health.”

  The same evening saw two sturdy women arrive with supper for the carpenters; whereupon the clatter of labour ceased, and therefore the rustling of the forest and the murmuring of the rivulet became the more distinct.

  Next, deliberately, and with many coughs, the ex-soldier set to work to collect some twigs and chips for the purpose of lighting a fire. After which, having arranged a kettle over the flames, he said to me suggestively:

  “You too should collect some firewood, for in these parts the nights are dark and chilly.”

  I set forth in search of chips among the stones which lay around the barraque, and, in so doing, stumbled across the newcomer, who was lying with his body resting on an elbow, and his head on his hand, as he conned a manuscript spread out before him. As he raised his eyes to gaze vaguely, inquiringly into my face, I saw that one of his eyes was larger than the other.

  Evidently he divined that he interested me, for he smiled. Yet so taken aback by this was I, that I passed on my way without speaking.

  Meanwhile the carpenters, disposed in two circles around the barraque (a circle to each woman), partook of a silent supper.

  Deeper and deeper grew the shadow of night over the defile. Warmer and warmer, denser and denser, grew the air, until the twilight caused the slopes of the mountains to soften in outline, and the rocks to seem to swell and merge with the bluish-blackness which overhung the bed of the defile, and the superimposed heights to form a single apparent whole, and the scene in general to resolve itself into, become united into, one compact bulk.

  Quietly then did tints hitherto red extinguish their tremulous glow—softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset’s sheen, the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now blushed to red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence—flowed with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with the resinous, cloyingly sweet perfume of our wood fire.

  The ex-soldier squatted down before the little blaze, and rearranged some fuel under the kettle.

  “Where is the other man?” said he. “Go and fetch him.”

  I departed for the purpose, and, on my way, heard one of the carpenters in the neighbourhood of the barraque say in a thick, unctuous, sing-song voice.

  “A great work is it indeed!”

  Whereafter I heard the two women fall to drawling in low, hungry accents:

  “With the flesh I’ll conquer pain;

  The spirit shall my lust restrain;

  All-supreme the soul shall reign;

  And carnal vices lure in vain.”

  True, the women pronounced their words distinctly enough; yet always they prolonged the final “u” sound of the stanza’s first and third lines until, as the melody floated away into the darkness, and, as it were, sank to earth, it came to resemble the long-drawn howl of a wolf.

  In answer to my invitation to come to supper, the newcomer sprang to his feet, folded up his manuscript, stuffed it into one of the pockets of his ragged coat, and said with a smile:

  “I had just been going to resort to the carpenters, for they would have given us some bread, I suppose? Long is it since I tasted anything.”

  The same words he repeated on our approaching the ex-soldier; much as though he took a pleasure in their phraseology.

  “You suppose that they would have given us bread?” echoed the ex-soldier as he unfastened his wallet. “Not they! No love is lost between them and ourselves.”

  “Whom do you mean by ‘ourselves’?”

  “Us here—you and myself—all Russian folk who may happen to be in these parts. From the way in which those fellows keep singing about palms, I should judge them to be sectarians of the sort called Mennonites.”

  “Or Molokans, rather?” the other man suggested as he seated himself in front of the fire.

  “Yes, or Molokans. Molokans or Mennonites—they’re all one. It is a German faith and though such fellows love a Teuton, they do not exactly welcome us.”

  Upon this the man with the Cossack forelock took a slice of bread which the ex-soldier cut from a loaf, with an onion and a pinch of salt. Then, as he regarded us with a pair of good-humoured eyes, he said, balancing his food on the palms of his hands:

  “There is a spot on the Sunzha, near here, where those fellows have a colony of their own. Yes, I myself have visited it. True, those fellows are hard enough, but at the same time to speak plainly, no one in these parts has any regard for us since only too many of the sort of Russian folk who come here in search of work are not overly-desirable.”

  “Where do you yourself come from?” The ex-soldier’s tone was severe.

  “From Kursk, we might say.”

  “From Russia, then?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But I have no great opinion even of myself.”

  The ex-soldier glanced distrustfully at the newcomer. Then he remarked:

  “What you say is cant, sheer Jesuitism. It is fellows like those, rather, that ought to have a poor opinion of themselves.”

  To this the other made no reply—merely he put a piece of bread into his mouth. For a moment or two the ex-soldier eyed him frowningly. Then he continued:

  “You seem to me to be a native of the Don country?”

  “Yes, I have lived on the Don as well.”

  “And also served in the army?”

  “No. I was an only son.”

  “Of a miestchanin?” [A member of the small commercial class.]

  “No, of a merchant.”

  “And your name—?”

  “Is Vasili.”

  The last reply came only after a pause, and reluctantly; wherefore, perceiving that the Kurskan had no particular desire to discuss his own affairs, the ex-soldier said no more on the subject, but lifted the kettle from the fire.

  The Molokans also h
ad kindled a blaze behind the corner of the barraque, and now its glow was licking the yellow boards of the structure until they seemed almost to be liquescent, to be about to dissolve and flow over the ground in a golden stream.

  Presently, as their fervour increased, the carpenters, invisible amid the obscurity, fell to singing hymns—the basses intoning monotonously, “Sing, thou Holy Angel!” and voices of higher pitch responding, coldly and formally.

  “Sing ye!

  Sing glory unto Christ, thou Angel of Holiness!

  Sing ye!

  Our singing will we add unto Thine,

  Thou Angel of Holiness!”

  And though the chorus failed altogether to dull the splashing of the rivulet and the babbling of the by-cut over a bed of stones, it seemed out of place in this particular spot; it aroused resentment against men who could not think of a lay more atune with the particular living, breathing objects around us.

  Gradually darkness enveloped the defile until only over the mouth of the pass, over the spot where, gleaming a brilliant blue, the rivulet escaped into a cleft that was overhung with a mist of a deeper shade, was there not yet suspended the curtain of the Southern night.

  Presently, the gloom caused one of the rocks in our vicinity to assume the guise of a monk who, kneeling in prayer, had his head adorned with a pointed skull-cap, and his face buried in his hands. Similarly, the stems of the trees stirred in the firelight until they developed the semblance of a file of friars entering, for early Mass, the porch of their chapel-of-ease.

  To my mind there then recurred a certain occasion when, on just such a dark and sultry night as this, I had been seated tale-telling under the boundary-wall of a row of monastic cells in the Don country. Suddenly I had heard a window above my head open, and someone exclaim in a kindly, youthful voice:

  “The Mother of God be blessed for all this goodly world of ours!”

  And though the window had closed again before I had had time to discern the speaker, I had known that there was resident in the monastery a friar who had large eyes, and a limp, and just such a face as had Vasili here; wherefore, in all probability it had been he who had breathed the benediction upon mankind at large, for the reason that moments there are when all humanity seems to be one’s own body, and in oneself there seems to beat the heart of all humanity.…