by Maxim Gorky
“Seven and a half. Seven!”
“And you have no care,” spoke the pilgrim, and his voice murmured like a brook. “Anybody will give you a crust of bread; and what else do you need in your freedom? In the world, cares fall upon the soul like fetters.”
“You speak well,” said Foma with a sigh.
“My dear brother!” exclaimed the pilgrim, softly, moving still closer toward him. “Since the soul has awakened, since it yearns toward freedom, do not lull it to sleep by force; hearken to its voice. The world with its charms has no beauty and holiness whatever, wherefore, then, obey its laws? In John Chrysostom it is said: ‘The real shechinah is man!’ Shechinah is a Hebrew word and it means the holy of holies. Consequently—”
A prolonged shrill sound of the whistle drowned his voice. He listened, rose quickly from the lounge and said:
“We are nearing the harbour. That’s what the whistle meant. I must be off! Well, goodbye, brother! May God give you strength and firmness to act according to the will of your soul! Goodbye, my dear boy!”
He made a low bow to Foma. There was something feminine, caressing and soft in his farewell words and bow. Foma also bowed low to him, bowed and remained as though petrified, standing with drooping head, his hand leaning against the table.
“Come to see me when you are in town,” he asked the pilgrim, who was hastily turning the handle of the cabin door.
“I will! I will come! Goodbye! Christ save you!”
When the steamer’s side touched the wharf Foma came out on the deck and began to look downward into the fog. From the steamer people were walking down the gang-planks, but Foma could not discern the pilgrim among those dark figures enveloped in the dense gloom. All those that left the steamer looked equally indistinct, and they all quickly disappeared from sight, as though they had melted in the gray dampness. One could see neither the shore nor anything else solid; the landing bridge rocked from the commotion caused by the steamer; above it the yellow spot of the lantern was swaying; the noise of the footsteps and the bustle of the people were dull.
The steamer put off and slowly moved along into the clouds. The pilgrim, the harbour, the turmoil of people’s voices—all suddenly disappeared like a dream, and again there remained only the dense gloom and the steamer heavily turning about in it. Foma stared before him into the dead sea of fog and thought of the blue, cloudless and caressingly warm sky—where was it?
On the next day, about noon, he sat In Yozhov’s small room and listened to the local news from the mouth of his friend. Yozhov had climbed on the table, which was piled with newspapers, and, swinging his feet, narrated:
“The election campaign has begun. The merchants are putting your godfather up as mayor—that old devil! Like the devil, he is immortal, although he must be upwards of a hundred and fifty years old already. He marries his daughter to Smolin. You remember that red-headed fellow. They say that he is a decent man, but nowadays they even call clever scoundrels decent men, because there are no men. Now Africashka plays the enlightened man; he has already managed to get into intelligent society, donated something to some enterprise or another and thus at once came to the front. Judging from his face, he is a sharper of the highest degree, but he will play a prominent part, for he knows how to adapt himself. Yes, friend, Africashka is a liberal. And a liberal merchant is a mixture of a wolf and a pig with a toad and a snake.”
“The devil take them all!” said Foma, waving his hand indifferently. “What have I to do with them? How about yourself—do you still keep on drinking?”
“I do! Why shouldn’t I drink?”
Half-clad and dishevelled, Yozhov looked like a plucked bird, which had just had a fight and had not yet recovered from the excitement of the conflict.
“I drink because, from time to time, I must quench the fire of my wounded heart. And you, you damp stump, you are smouldering little by little?”
“I have to go to the old man,” said Foma, wrinkling his face.
“Chance it!”
“I don’t feel like going. He’ll start to lecture me.”
“Then don’t go!”
“But I must.”
“Then go!”
“Why do you always play the buffoon?” said Foma, with displeasure, “as though you were indeed merry.”
“By God, I feel merry!” exclaimed Yozhov, jumping down from the table. “What a fine roasting I gave a certain gentleman in the paper yesterday! And then—I’ve heard a clever anecdote: A company was sitting on the sea-shore philosophizing at length upon life. And a Jew said to them: ‘Gentlemen, why do you employ so many different words? I’ll tell it to you all at once: Our life is not worth a single copeck, even as this stormy sea! ‘”
“Eh, the devil take you!” said Foma. “Good-bye. I am going.”
“Go ahead! I am in a fine frame of mind today and I will not moan with you. All the more so considering you don’t moan, but grunt.”
Foma went away, leaving Yozhov singing at the top of his voice:
“Beat the drum and fear not.”
“Drum? You are a drum yourself;” thought Foma, with irritation, as he slowly came out on the street.
At the Mayakins he was met by Luba. Agitated and animated, she suddenly appeared before him, speaking quickly:
“You? My God! How pale you are! How thin you’ve grown! It seems you have been leading a fine life.”
Then her face became distorted with alarm and she exclaimed almost in a whisper:
“Ah, Foma. You don’t know. Do you hear? Someone is ringing the bell. Perhaps it is he.”
And she rushed out of the room, leaving behind her in the air the rustle of her silk gown, and the astonished Foma, who had not even had a chance to ask her where her father was. Yakov Tarasovich was at home. Attired in his holiday clothes, in a long frock coat with medals on his breast, he stood on the threshold with his hands outstretched, clutching at the door posts. His green little eyes examined Foma, and, feeling their look upon him, Foma raised his head and met them.
“How do you do, my fine gentleman?” said the old man, shaking his head reproachfully. “Where has it pleased you to come from, may I ask? Who has sucked off that fat of yours? Or is it true that a pig looks for a puddle, and Foma for a place which is worse?”
“Have you no other words for me?” asked Foma, sternly, looking straight into the old man’s face. And suddenly he noticed that his godfather shuddered, his legs trembled, his eyes began to blink repeatedly, and his hands clutched the door posts with an effort. Foma advanced toward him, presuming that the old man was feeling ill, but Yakov Tarasovich said in a dull and angry voice:
“Stand aside. Get out of the way.”
And his face assumed its usual expression.
Foma stepped back and found himself side by side with a rather short, stout man, who bowed to Mayakin, and said in a hoarse voice:
“How do you do, papa?”
“How are you, Taras Yakovlich, how are you?” said the old man, bowing, smiling distractedly, and still clinging to the door posts.
Foma stepped aside in confusion, seated himself in an armchair, and, petrified with curiosity, wide-eyed, began to watch the meeting of father and son.
The father, standing in the doorway, swayed his feeble body, leaning his hands against the door posts, and, with his head bent on one side and eyes half shut, stared at his son in silence. The son stood about three steps away from him; his head already gray, was lifted high; he knitted his brow and gazed at his father with large dark eyes. His small, black, pointed beard and his small moustache quivered on his meagre face, with its gristly nose, like that of his father. And the hat, also, quivered in his hand. From behind his shoulder Foma saw the pale, frightened and joyous face of Luba—she looked at her father with beseeching eyes and it seemed she was on the point of crying out. For a few moments all were silent and m
otionless, crushed as they were by the immensity of their emotions. The silence was broken by the low, but dull and quivering voice of Yakov Tarasovich:
“You have grown old, Taras.”
The son laughed in his father’s face silently, and, with a swift glance, surveyed him from head to foot.
The father tearing his hands from the door posts, made a step toward his son and suddenly stopped short with a frown. Then Taras Mayakin, with one huge step, came up to his father and gave him his hand.
“Well, let us kiss each other,” suggested the father, softly.
The two old men convulsively clasped each other in their arms, exchanged warm kisses and then stepped apart. The wrinkles of the older man quivered, the lean face of the younger was immobile, almost stern. The kisses had changed nothing in the external side of this scene, only Lubov burst into a sob of joy, and Foma awkwardly moved about in his seat, feeling as though his breath were failing him.
“Eh, children, you are wounds to the heart—you are not its joy,” complained Yakov Tarasovich in a ringing voice, and he evidently invested a great deal in these words, for immediately after he had pronounced them he became radiant, more courageous, and he said briskly, addressing himself to his daughter:
“Well, have you melted with joy? You had better go and prepare something for us—tea and so forth. We’ll entertain the prodigal son. You must have forgotten, my little old man, what sort of a man your father is?”
Taras Mayakin scrutinized his parent with a meditative look of his large eyes and he smiled, speechless, clad in black, wherefore the gray hair on his head and in his beard told more strikingly.
“Well, be seated. Tell me—how have you lived, what have you done? What are you looking at? Ah! That’s my godson. Ignat Gordyeeff’s son, Foma. Do you remember Ignat?”
“I remember everything,” said Taras.
“Oh! That’s good, if you are not bragging. Well, are you married?”
“I am a widower.”
“Have you any children?”
“They died. I had two.”
“That’s a pity. I would have had grandchildren.”
“May I smoke?” asked Taras.
“Go ahead. Just look at him, you’re smoking cigars.”
“Don’t you like them?”
“I? Come on, it’s all the same to me. I say that it looks rather aristocratic to smoke cigars.”
“And why should we consider ourselves lower than the aristocrats?” said Taras, laughing.
“Do, I consider ourselves lower?” exclaimed the old man. “I merely said it because it looked ridiculous to me, such a sedate old fellow, with beard trimmed in foreign fashion, cigar in his mouth. Who is he? My son—he-he-he!” the old man tapped Taras on the shoulder and sprang away from him, as though frightened lest he were rejoicing too soon, lest that might not be the proper way to treat that half gray man. And he looked searchingly and suspiciously into his son’s large eyes, which were surrounded by yellowish swellings.
Taras smiled in his father’s face an affable and warm smile, and said to him thoughtfully:
“That’s the way I remember you—cheerful and lively. It looks as though you had not changed a bit during all these years.”
The old man straightened himself proudly, and, striking his breast with his fist, said:
“I shall never change, because life has no power over him who knows his own value. Isn’t that so?”
“Oh! How proud you are!”
“I must have taken after my son,” said the old man with a cunning grimace. “Do you know, dear, my son was silent for seventeen years out of pride.”
“That’s because his father would not listen to him,” Taras reminded him.
“It’s all right now. Never mind the past. Only God knows which of us is to blame. He, the upright one, He’ll tell it to you—wait! I shall keep silence. This is not the time for us to discuss that matter. You better tell me—what have you been doing all these years? How did you come to that soda factory? How have you made your way?”
“That’s a long story,” said Taras with a sigh; and emitting from his mouth a great puff of smoke, he began slowly: “When I acquired the possibility to live at liberty, I entered the office of the superintendent of the gold mines of the Remezovs.”
“I know; they’re very rich. Three brothers. I know them all. One is a cripple, the other a fool, and the third a miser. Go on!”
“I served under him for two years. And then I married his daughter,” narrated Mayakin in a hoarse voice.
“The superintendent’s? That wasn’t foolish at all.” Taras became thoughtful and was silent awhile. The old man looked at his sad face and understood his son.
“And so you lived with your wife happily,” he said. “Well, what can you do? To the dead belongs paradise, and the living must live on. You are not so very old as yet. Have you been a widower long?”
“This is the third year.”
“So? And how did you chance upon the soda factory?”
“That belongs to my father-in-law.”
“Aha! What is your salary?”
“About five thousand.”
“Mm. That’s not a stale crust. Yes, that’s a galley slave for you!”
Taras glanced at his father with a firm look and asked him drily:
“By the way, what makes you think that I was a convict?”
The old man glanced at his son with astonishment, which was quickly changed into joy:
“Ah! What then? You were not? The devil take them! Then—how was it? Don’t take offence! How could I know? They said you were in Siberia! Well, and there are the galleys!”
“To make an end of this once for all,” said Taras, seriously and impressively, clapping his hand on his knee, “I’ll tell you right now how it all happened. I was banished to Siberia to settle there for six years, and, during all the time of my exile, I lived in the mining region of the Lena. In Moscow I was imprisoned for about nine months. That’s all!”
“So-o! But what does it mean?” muttered Yakov Tarasovich, with confusion and joy.
“And here they circulated that absurd rumour.”
“That’s right—it is absurd indeed!” said the old man, distressed.
“And it did a pretty great deal of harm on a certain occasion.”
“Really? Is that possible?”
“Yes. I was about to go into business for myself, and my credit was ruined on account of—”
“Pshaw!” said Yakov Tarasovich, as he spat angrily. “Oh, devil! Come, come, is that possible?”
Foma sat all this time in his corner, listening to the conversation between the Mayakins, and, blinking perplexedly, he fixedly examined the newcomer. Recalling Lubov’s bearing toward her brother, and influenced, to a certain degree, by her stories about Taras, he expected to see in him something unusual, something unlike the ordinary people. He had thought that Taras would speak in some peculiar way, would dress in a manner peculiar to himself; and in general he would be unlike other people. While before him sat a sedate, stout man, faultlessly dressed, with stern eyes, very much like his father in face, and the only difference between them was that the son had a cigar in his mouth and a black beard. He spoke briefly in a business-like way of everyday things—where was, then, that peculiar something about him? Now he began to tell his father of the profits in the manufacture of soda. He had not been a galley slave—Lubov had lied! And Foma was very much pleased when he pictured to himself how he would speak to Lubov about her brother.
Now and then she appeared in the doorway during the conversation between her father and her brother. Her face was radiant with happiness, and her eyes beamed with joy as she looked at the black figure of Taras, clad in such a peculiarly thick frock coat, with pockets on the sides and with big buttons. She walked on tiptoe, and somehow always stretched her
neck toward her brother. Foma looked at her questioningly, but she did not notice him, constantly running back and forth past the door, with plates and bottles in her hands.
It so happened that she glanced into the room just when her brother was telling her father about the galleys. She stopped as though petrified, holding a tray in her outstretched hands and listened to everything her brother said about the punishment inflicted upon him. She listened, and slowly walked away, without catching Foma’s astonished and sarcastic glance. Absorbed in his reflections on Taras, slightly offended by the lack of attention shown him, and by the fact that since the handshake at the introduction Taras had not given him a single glance, Foma ceased for awhile to follow the conversation of the Mayakins, and suddenly he felt that someone seized him by the shoulder. He trembled and sprang to his feet, almost felling his godfather, who stood before him with excited face:
“There—look! That is a man! That’s what a Mayakin is! They have seven times boiled him in lye; they have squeezed oil out of him, and yet he lives! Understand? Without any aid—alone—he made his way and found his place and—he is proud! That means Mayakin! A Mayakin means a man who holds his fate in his own hands. Do you understand? Take a lesson from him! Look at him! You cannot find another like him in a hundred; you’d have to look for one in a thousand. What? Just bear this in mind: You cannot forge a Mayakin from man into either devil or angel.”
Stupefied by this tempestuous shock, Foma became confused and did not know what to say in reply to the old man’s noisy song of praise. He saw that Taras, calmly smoking his cigar, was looking at his father, and that the corners of his lips were quivering with a smile. His face looked condescendingly contented, and all his figure somewhat aristocratic and haughty. He seemed to be amused by the old man’s joy.
And Yakov Tarasovich tapped Foma on the chest with his finger and said:
“I do not know him, my own son. He has not opened his soul to me. It may be that such a difference had grown up between us that not only an eagle, but the devil himself cannot cross it. Perhaps his blood has overboiled; that there is not even the scent of the father’s blood in it. But he is a Mayakin! And I can feel it at once! I feel it and say: ‘Today thou forgivest Thy servant, Oh Lord!’”
