The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “The very best thing in our society is the patroness; the most reasonable is what we are doing—courting the patroness; the most difficult is to tell the patroness such a compliment as would satisfy her; and the most sensible thing is to admire the patroness silently and hopelessly. So that in reality, you are a member not of ‘the Society of Solicitude,’ and so on, but of the Society of Tantaluses, which is composed of persons bent on pleasing Sophya Medinskaya.”

  Foma listened to his chatter, now and then looking at the patroness, who was absorbed in a conversation with the chief of the police; Foma roared in reply to his interlocutor, pretending to be busy eating, and he wished that all this would end the sooner. He felt that he was wretched, stupid, ridiculous and he was certain that everybody was watching and censuring him. This tied him with invisible shackles, thus checking his words and his thoughts. At last he went so far, that the line of various physiognomies, stretched out by the table opposite him, seemed to him a long and wavy white strip besprinkled with laughing eyes, and all these eyes were pricking him unpleasantly and painfully.

  Mayakin sat near the city mayor, waved his fork in the air quickly, and kept on talking all the time, now contracting, now expanding the wrinkles of his face. The mayor, a gray-headed, red-faced, short-necked man, stared at him like a bull, with obstinate attention and at times he rapped on the edge of the table with his big finger affirmatively. The animated talk and laughter drowned his godfather’s bold speech, and Foma was unable to hear a single word of it, much more so that the tenor of the secretary was unceasingly ringing in his ears:

  “Look, there, the archdeacon arose; he is filling his lungs with air; he will soon proclaim an eternal memory for Ignat Matveyich.”

  “May I not go away?” asked Foma in a low voice.

  “Why not? Everybody will understand this.”

  The deacon’s resounding voice drowned and seemed to have crushed the noise in the hail; the eminent merchants fixed their eyes on the big, wide-open mouth, from which a deep sound was streaming forth, and availing himself of this moment, Foma arose from his seat and left the hall.

  After awhile he breathed freely and, sitting in his cab, thought sadly that there was no place for him amid these people. Inwardly, he called them polished. He did not like their brilliancy, their faces, their smiles or their words, but the freedom and the cleverness of their movements, their ability to speak much and on any subject, their pretty costumes—all this aroused in him a mixture of envy and respect for them. He felt sad and oppressed at the consciousness of being unable to talk so much and so fluently as all these people, and here he recalled that Luba Mayakina had more than once scoffed at him on this account.

  Foma did not like Mayakin’s daughter, and since he had learned from his father of Mayakin’s intention to marry him to Luba, the young Gordyeeff began to shun her. But after his father’s death he was almost every day at the Mayakins, and somehow Luba said to him one day:

  “I am looking at you, and, do you know?—you do not resemble a merchant at all.”

  “Nor do you look like a merchant’s daughter,” said Foma, and looked at her suspiciously. He did not understand the meaning of her words; did she mean to offend him, or did she say these words without any kind thoughts?

  “Thank God for this!” said she and smiled to him a kind, friendly smile.

  “What makes you so glad?” he asked.

  “The fact that we don’t resemble our fathers.”

  Foma glanced at her in astonishment and kept silent.

  “Tell me frankly,” said she, lowering her voice, “you do not love my father, do you? You don’t like him?”

  “Not very much,” said Foma, slowly.

  “And I dislike him very much.”

  “What for?”

  “For everything. When you grow wiser, you will know it yourself. Your father was a better man.”

  “Of course!” said Foma, proudly.

  After this conversation an attachment sprang up between them almost immediately, and growing stronger from day to day, it soon developed into friendship, though a somewhat odd friendship it was.

  Though Luba was not older than her god-brother, she nevertheless treated him as an older person would treat a little boy. She spoke to him condescendingly, often jesting at his expense; her talk was always full of words which were unfamiliar to Foma; and she pronounced these words with particular emphasis and with evident satisfaction. She was especially fond of speaking about her brother Taras, whom she had never seen, but of whom she was telling such stories as would make him look like Aunt Anfisa’s brave and noble robbers. Often, when complaining of her father, she said to Foma:

  “You will also be just such a skinflint.”

  All this was unpleasant to the youth and stung his vanity. But at times she was straightforward, simple-minded, and particularly kind and friendly to him; then he would unburden his heart before her, and for a long time they would share each other’s thoughts and feelings.

  Both spoke a great deal and spoke sincerely, but neither one understood the other; it seemed to Foma that whatever Luba had to say was foreign to him and unnecessary to her, and at the same time he clearly saw that his awkward words did not at all interest her, and that she did not care to understand them. No matter how long these conversations lasted, they gave both of them the sensation of discomfort and dissatisfaction. As if an invisible wall of perplexity had suddenly arisen and stood between them. They did not venture to touch this wall, or to tell each other that they felt it was there—they resumed their conversations, dimly conscious that there was something in each of them that might bind and unite them.

  When Foma arrived at his godfather’s house, he found Luba alone. She came out to meet him, and it was evident that she was either ill or out of humour; her eyes were flashing feverishly and were surrounded with black circles. Feeling cold, she muffled herself in a warm shawl and said with a smile:

  “It is good that you’ve come! For I was sitting here alone; it is lonesome—I don’t feel like going anywhere. Will you drink tea?”

  “I will. What is the matter with you, are you ill?”

  “Go to the dining-room, and I’ll tell them to bring the samovar,” she said, not answering his question.

  He went into one of the small rooms of the house, whose two windows overlooked the garden. In the middle of the room stood an oval table, surrounded with old-fashioned, leather-covered chairs; on one partition hung a clock in a long case with a glass door, in the corner was a cupboard for dishes, and opposite the windows, by the walls, was an oaken sideboard as big as a fair-sized room.

  “Are you coming from the banquet?” asked Luba, entering.

  Foma nodded his head mutely.

  “Well, how was it? Grand?”

  “It was terrible!” Foma smiled. “I sat there as if on hot coals. They all looked there like peacocks, while I looked like a barn-owl.”

  Luba was taking out dishes from the cupboard and said nothing to Foma.

  “Really, why are you so sad?” asked Foma again, glancing at her gloomy face.

  She turned to him and said with enthusiasm and anxiety:

  “Ah, Foma! What a book I’ve read! If you could only understand it!”

  “It must be a good book, since it worked you up in this way,” said Foma, smiling.

  “I did not sleep. I read all night long. Just think of it: you read—and it seems to you that the gates of another kingdom are thrown open before you. And the people there are different, and their language is different, everything different! Life itself is different there.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Foma, dissatisfied. “That’s all fiction, deceit; so is the theatre. The merchants are ridiculed there. Are they really so stupid? Of course! Take your father, for example.”

  “The theatre and the school are one and the same, Foma,” said Luba, i
nstructively. “The merchants used to be like this. And what deceit can there be in books?”

  “Just as in fairy—tales, nothing is real.”

  “You are wrong! You have read no books; how can you judge? Books are precisely real. They teach you how to live.”

  “Come, come!” Foma waved his hand. “Drop it; no good will come out of your books! There, take your father, for example, does he read books? And yet he is clever! I looked at him today and envied him. His relations with everybody are so free, so clever, he has a word for each and every one. You can see at once that whatever he should desire he is sure to attain.”

  “What is he striving for?” exclaimed Luba. “Nothing but money. But there are people that want happiness for all on earth, and to gain this end they work without sparing themselves; they suffer and perish! How can my father be compared with these?”

  “You need not compare them. They evidently like one thing, while your father likes another.”

  “They do not like anything!”

  How’s that?

  “They want to change everything.”

  “So they do strive for something?” said Foma, thoughtfully. “They do wish for something?”

  “They wish for happiness for all!” cried Luba, hotly. “I can’t understand this,” said Foma, nodding his head. “Who cares there for my happiness? And then again, what happiness can they give me, since I, myself, do not know as yet what I want? No, you should have rather looked at those that were at the banquet.”

  “Those are not men!” announced Luba, categorically.

  “I do not know what they are in your eyes, but you can see at once that they know their place. A clever, easy-going lot.”

  “Ah, Foma!” exclaimed Luba, vexed. “You understand nothing! Nothing agitates you! You are an idler.”

  “Now, that’s going too far! I’ve simply not had time enough to see where I am.”

  “You are simply an empty man,” said Luba, resolutely and firmly.

  “You were not within my soul,” replied Foma, calmly. “You cannot know my thoughts.”

  “What is there that you should think of?” said Luba, shrugging her shoulders.

  “So? First of all, I am alone. Secondly, I must live. Don’t I understand that it is altogether impossible for me to live as I am now? I do not care to be made the laughing-stock of others. I cannot even speak to people. No, nor can I think.” Foma concluded his words and smiled confusedly.

  “It is necessary to read, to study,” Luba advised him convincingly, pacing up and down the room.

  “Something is stirring within my soul,” Foma went on, not looking at her, as though speaking to himself; “but I cannot tell what it is. I see, for instance, that whatever my godfather says is clever and reasonable. But that does not attract me. The other people are by far more interesting to me.”

  “You mean the aristocrats?” asked Luba.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s just the place for you!” said Luba, with a smile of contempt. “Eh, you! Are they men? Do they have souls?”

  “How do you know them? You are not acquainted with them.”

  “And the books? Have I not read books about them?”

  The maid brought in the samovar, and the conversation was interrupted. Luba made tea in silence while Foma looked at her and thought of Medinskaya. He was wishing to have a talk with her.

  “Yes,” said the girl, thoughtfully, “I am growing more and more convinced everyday that it is hard to live. What shall I do? Marry? Whom? Shall I marry a merchant who will do nothing but rob people all his life, nothing but drink and play cards? A savage? I do not want it! I want to be an individual. I am such, for I know how wrong the construction of life is. Shall I study? My father will not allow this. Oh Lord! Shall I run away? I have not enough courage. What am I to do?”

  She clasped her hands and bowed her head over the table.

  “If you knew but how repulsive everything is. There is not a living soul around here. Since my mother died, my father drove everyone away. Some went off to study. Lipa, too, left us. She writes me:

  ‘Read.’ Ah, I am reading! I am reading!’ she exclaimed, with despair in her voice, and after a moment’s silence she went on sadly:

  “Books do not contain what the heart needs most, and there’s much I cannot understand in them. And then, I feel weary to be reading all the time alone, alone! I want to speak to a man, but there is none to speak to! I feel disgusted. We live but once, and it is high time for me to live, and yet there is not a soul! Wherefore shall I live? Lipa tells me: ‘Read and you will understand it.’ I want bread and she gives me a stone. I understand what one must do—one must stand up for what he loves and believes. He must fight for it.”

  And she concluded, uttering something like a moan:

  “But I am alone! Whom shall I fight? There are no enemies here. There are no men! I live here in a prison!”

  Foma listened to her words, fixedly examining the fingers of his hand; he felt that in her words was some great distress, but he could not understand her. And when she became silent, depressed and sad, he found nothing to tell her save a few words that were like a reproach:

  “There, you yourself say that books are worthless to you, and yet you instruct me to read.”

  She looked into his face, and anger flashed in her eyes.

  “Oh, how I wish that all these torments would awaken within you, the torments that constantly oppress me. That your thoughts, like mine, would rob you of your sleep, that you, too, would be disgusted with everything, and with yourself as well! I despise every one of you. I hate you!”

  All aflush, she looked at him so angrily and spoke with so much spitefulness, that in his astonishment he did not even feel offended by her. She had never before spoken to him in such manner.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked her.

  “I hate you, too! You, what are you? Dead, empty; how will you live? What will you give to mankind?” she said with malice, in a low voice.

  “I’ll give nothing; let them strive for it themselves,” answered Foma, knowing that these words would augment her anger.

  “Unfortunate creature!” exclaimed the girl with contempt.

  The assurance and the power of her reproaches involuntarily compelled Foma to listen attentively to her spiteful words; he felt there was common sense in them. He even came nearer to her, but she, enraged and exasperated, turned away from him and became silent.

  It was still light outside, and the reflection of the setting sun lay still on the branches of the linden-trees before the windows, but the room was already filled with twilight, and the sideboard, the clock and the cupboard seemed to have grown in size. The huge pendulum peeped out every moment from beneath the glass of the clock-case, and flashing dimly, was hiding with a weary sound now on the right side, now on the left. Foma looked at the pendulum and he began to feel awkward and lonesome. Luba arose and lighted the lamp which was hanging over the table. The girl’s face was pale and stern.

  “You went for me,” said Foma, reservedly. “What for? I can’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to speak to you!” replied Luba, angrily.

  “That’s your affair. But nevertheless, what wrong have I done to you?”

  “You?

  “I.”

  “Understand me, I am suffocating! It is close here. Is this life? Is this the way how to live? What am I? I am a hanger-on in my father’s house. They keep me here as a housekeeper. Then they’ll marry me! Again housekeeping. It’s a swamp. I am drowning, suffocating.”

  “And what have I to do with it?” asked Foma.

  “You are no better than the others.”

  “And therefore I am guilty before you?”

  “Yes, guilty! You must desire to be better.”

  “But do I not wish it?” excla
imed Foma.

  The girl was about to tell him something, but at this time the bell began to ring somewhere, and she said in a low voice, leaning back in her chair:

  “It’s father.”

  “I would not feel sorry if he stayed away a little longer,” said Foma. “I wish I could listen to you some more. You speak so very oddly.”

  “Ah! my children, my doves!” exclaimed Yakov Tarasovich, appearing in the doorway. “You’re drinking tea? Pour out some tea for me, Lugava!”

  Sweetly smiling, and rubbing his hands, he sat down near Foma and asked, playfully jostling him in the side:

  “What have you been cooing about?”

  “So—about different trifles,” answered Luba.

  “I haven’t asked you, have I?” said her father to her, with a grimace. “You just sit there, hold your tongue, and mind your woman’s affairs.”

  “I’ve been telling her about the dinner,” Foma interrupted his godfather’s words.

  “Aha! So-o-o. Well, then, I’ll also speak about the dinner. I have been watching you of late. You don’t behave yourself sensibly!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Foma, knitting his brow, ill pleased.

  “I just mean that your behaviour is preposterous, and that’s all. When the governor, for instance, speaks to you, you keep quiet.”

  “What should I tell him? He says that it is a misfortune to lose a father. Well, I know it. What could I tell him?”

  “But as the Lord willed it so, I do not grumble, your Excellency. That’s what you should have said, or something in this spirit. Governors, my dear, are very fond of meekness in a man.”

  “Was I to look at him like a lamb?” said Foma, with a smile.

  “You did look like a lamb, and that was unnecessary. You must look neither like a lamb, nor like a wolf, but just play off before him as though saying: ‘You are our father, we are your children,’ and he will immediately soften.”

  “And what is this for?”

  “For any event. A governor, my dear, can always be of use somewhere.”