by Maxim Gorky
“Soon?” said the mother, relieved now and smiling. “I know he’ll be let out soon!”
“Well, if you know, it’s all right! Give me tea, mother. Tell me how you’ve been, how you’ve passed your time.”
He looked at her, smiling all over, and seemed so near to her, such a splendid fellow. A loving, somewhat melancholy gleam flashed from the depths of his round, blue eyes.
“I love you dearly, Andriusha!” the mother said, heaving a deep sigh, as she looked at his thin face grotesquely covered with tufts of hair.
“People are satisfied with little from me! I know you love me; you are capable of loving everybody; you have a great heart,” said the Little Russian, rocking in his chair, his eyes straying about the room.
“No, I love you very differently!” insisted the mother. “If you had a mother, people would envy her because she had such a son.”
The Little Russian swayed his head, and rubbed it vigorously with both hands.
“I have a mother, somewhere!” he said in a low voice.
“Do you know what I did today?” she exclaimed, and reddening a little, her voice choking with satisfaction, she quickly recounted how she had smuggled literature into the factory.
For a moment he looked at her in amazement with his eyes wide open; then he burst out into a loud guffaw, stamped his feet, thumped his head with his fingers, and cried joyously:
“Oho! That’s no joke any more! That’s business! Won’t Pavel be glad, though! Oh, you’re a trump. That’s good, mother! You have no idea how good it is! Both for Pavel and all who were arrested with him!”
He snapped his fingers in ecstasy, whistled, and fairly doubled over, all radiant with joy. His delight evoked a vigorous response from the mother.
“My dear, my Andriusha!” she began, as if her heart had burst open, and gushed over merrily with a limpid stream of living words full of serene joy. “I’ve thought all my life, ‘Lord Christ in heaven! what did I live for?’ Beatings, work! I saw nothing except my husband. I knew nothing but fear! And how Pasha grew I did not see, and I hardly know whether I loved him when my husband was alive. All my concerns, all my thoughts were centered upon one thing—to feed my beast, to propitiate the master of my life with enough food, pleasing to his palate, and served on time, so as not to incur his displeasure, so as to escape the terrors of a beating, to get him to spare me but once! But I do not remember that he ever did spare me. He beat me so—not as a wife is beaten, but as one whom you hate and detest. Twenty years I lived like that, and what was up to the time of my marriage I do not recall. I remember certain things, but I see nothing! I am as a blind person. Yegor Ivanovich was here—we are from the same village—and he spoke about this and about that. I remember the houses, the people, but how they lived, what they spoke about, what happened to this one and what to that one—I forget, I do not see! I remember fires—two fires. It seems that everything has been beaten out of me, that my soul has been locked up and sealed tight. It’s grown blind, it does not hear!”
Her quick-drawn breath was almost a sob. She bent forward, and continued in a lowered voice: “When my husband died I turned to my son; but he went into this business, and I was seized with a pity for him, such a yearning pity—for if he should perish, how was I to live alone? What dread, what fright I have undergone! My heart was rent when I thought of his fate.
“Our woman’s love is not a pure love! We love that which we need. And here are you! You are grieving about your mother. What do you want her for? And all the others go and suffer for the people, they go to prison, to Siberia, they die for them, many are hung. Young girls walk alone at night, in the snow, in the mud, in the rain. They walk seven versts from the city to our place. Who drives them? Who pursues them? They love! You see, theirs is pure love! They believe! Yes, indeed, they believe, Andriusha! But here am I—I can’t love like that! I love my own, the near ones!”
“Yes, you can!” said the Little Russian, and turning away his face from her, he rubbed his head, face, and eyes vigorously as was his wont. “Everybody loves those who are near,” he continued. “To a large heart, what is far is also near. You, mother, are capable of a great deal. You have a large capacity of motherliness!”
“God grant it!” she said quietly. “I feel that it is good to live like that! Here are you, for instance, whom I love. Maybe I love you better than I do Pasha. He is always so silent. Here he wants to get married to Sashenka, for example, and he never told me, his mother, a thing about it.”
“That’s not true,” the Little Russian retorted abruptly. “I know it isn’t true. It’s true he loves her, and she loves him. But marry? No, they are not going to marry! She’d want to, but Pavel—he can’t! He doesn’t want to!”
“See how you are!” said the mother quietly, and she fixed her eyes sadly and musingly on the Little Russian’s face. “You see how you are! You offer up your own selves!”
“Pavel is a rare man!” the Little Russian uttered in a low voice. “He is a man of iron!”
“Now he sits in prison,” continued the mother reflectively. “It’s awful, it’s terrible! It’s not as it used to be before! Life altogether is not as it used to be, and the terror is different from the old terror. You feel a pity for everybody, and you are alarmed for everybody! And the heart is different. The soul has opened its eyes, it looks on, and is sad and glad at the same time. There’s much I do not understand, and I feel so bitter and hurt that you do not believe in the Lord God. Well, I guess I can’t help that! But I see and know that you are good people. And you have consecrated yourselves to a stern life for the sake of the people, to a life of hardship for the sake of truth. The truth you stand for, I comprehend: as long as there will be the rich, the people will get nothing, neither truth nor happiness, nothing! Indeed, that’s so, Andriusha! Here am I living among you, while all this is going on. Sometimes at night my thoughts wander off to my past. I think of my youthful strength trampled under foot, of my young heart torn and beaten, and I feel sorry for myself and embittered. But for all that I live better now, I see myself more and more, I feel myself more.”
The Little Russian arose, and trying not to scrape with his feet, began to walk carefully up and down the room, tall, lean, absorbed in thought.
“Well said!” he exclaimed in a low voice. “Very well! There was a young Jew in Kerch who wrote verses, and once he wrote:
“And the innocently slain, Truth will raise to life again.
“He himself was killed by the police in Kerch, but that’s not the point. He knew the truth and did a great deal to spread it among the people. So here you are one of the innocently slain. He spoke the truth!”
“There, I am talking now,” the mother continued. “I talk and do not hear myself, don’t believe my own ears! All my life I was silent, I always thought of one thing—how to live through the day apart, how to pass it without being noticed, so that nobody should touch me! And now I think about everything. Maybe I don’t understand your affairs so very well; but all are near me, I feel sorry for all, and I wish well to all. And to you, Andriusha, more than all the rest.”
He took her hand in his, pressed it tightly, and quickly turned aside. Fatigued with emotion and agitation, the mother leisurely and silently washed the cups; and her breast gently glowed with a bold feeling that warmed her heart.
Walking up and down the room the Little Russian said:
“Mother, why don’t you sometimes try to befriend Vyesovshchikov and be kind to him? He is a fellow that needs it. His father sits in prison—a nasty little old man. Nikolay sometimes catches sight of him through the window and he begins to swear at him. That’s bad, you know. He is a good fellow, Nikolay is. He is fond of dogs, mice, and all sorts of animals, but he does not like people. That’s the pass to which a man can be brought.”
“His mother disappeared without a trace, his father is a thief and a drunkard,” said Nilovn
a pensively.
When Andrey left to go to bed, the mother, without being noticed, made the sign of the cross over him, and after about half an hour, she asked quietly, “Are you asleep, Andriusha?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing! Good night!”
“Thank you, mother, thank you!” he answered gently.
CHAPTER XII
The next day when Nilovna came up to the gates of the factory with her load, the guides stopped her roughly, and ordering her to put the pails down on the ground, made a careful examination.
“My eatables will get cold,” she observed calmly, as they felt around her dress.
“Shut up!” said a guard sullenly.
Another one, tapping her lightly on the shoulder, said with assurance:
“Those books are thrown across the fence, I say!”
Old man Sizov came up to her and looking around said in an undertone:
“Did you hear, mother?”
“What?”
“About the pamphlets. They’ve appeared again. They’ve just scattered them all over like salt over bread. Much good those arrests and searches have done! My nephew Mazin has been hauled away to prison, your son’s been taken. Now it’s plain it isn’t he!” And stroking his beard Sizov concluded, “It’s not people, but thoughts, and thoughts are not fleas; you can’t catch them!”
He gathered his beard in his hand, looked at her, and said as he walked away:
“Why don’t you come to see me some time? I guess you are lonely all by yourself.”
She thanked him, and calling her wares, she sharply observed the unusual animation in the factory. The workmen were all elated, they formed little circles, then parted, and ran from one group to another. Animated voices and happy, satisfied faces all around! The soot-filled atmosphere was astir and palpitating with something bold and daring. Now here, now there, approving ejaculations were heard, mockery, and sometimes threats.
“Aha! It seems truth doesn’t agree with them,” she heard one say.
The younger men were in especially good spirits, while the elder workmen had cautious smiles on their faces. The authorities walked about with a troubled expression, and the police ran from place to place. When the workingmen saw them, they dispersed, and walked away slowly, or if they remained standing, they stopped their conversation, looking silently at the agitated, angry faces.
The workingmen seemed for some reason to be all washed and clean. The figure of Gusev loomed high, and his brother stalked about like a drake, and roared with laughter. The joiner’s foreman, Vavilov, and the record clerk, Isay, walked slowly past the mother. The little, wizened clerk, throwing up his head and turning his neck to the left, looked at the frowning face of the foreman, and said quickly, shaking his reddish beard:
“They laugh, Ivan Ivanovich. It’s fun to them. They are pleased, although it’s no less a matter than the destruction of the government, as the manager said. What must be done here, Ivan Ivanovich, is not merely to weed but to plow!”
Vavilov walked with his hands folded behind his back, and his fingers tightly clasped.
“You print there what you please, you blackguards!” he cried aloud. “But don’t you dare say a word about me!”
Vasily Gusev came up to Nilovna and declared:
“I am going to eat with you again. Is it good today?” And lowering his head and screwing up his eyes, he added in an undertone: “You see? It hit exactly! Good! Oh, mother, very good!”
She nodded her head affably to him, flattered that Gusev, the sauciest fellow in the village, addressed her with a respectful plural “you,” as he talked to her in secret. The general stir and animation in the factory also pleased her, and she thought to herself: “What would they do without me?”
Three common laborers stopped at a short distance from her, and one of them said with disappointment in his voice: “I couldn’t find any anywhere!”
Another remarked: “I’d like to hear it, though. I can’t read myself, but I understand it hits them just in the right place.”
The third man looked around him, and said: “Let’s go into the boiler room. I’ll read it for you there!”
“It works!” Gusev whispered, a wink lurking in his eye.
Nilovna came home in gay spirits. She had now seen for herself how people are moved by books.
“The people down there are sorry they can’t read,” she said to Andrey, “and here am I who could when I was young, but have forgotten.”
“Learn over again, then,” suggested the Little Russian.
“At my age? What do you want to make fun of me for?”
Andrey, however, took a book from the shelf and pointing with the tip of a knife at a letter on the cover, asked: “What’s this?”
“R,” she answered, laughing.
“And this?”
“A.”
She felt awkward, hurt, and offended. It seemed to her that Andrey’s eyes were laughing at her, and she avoided their look. But his voice sounded soft and calm in her ears. She looked askance at his face, once, and a second time. It was earnest and serious.
“Do you really wish to teach me to read?” she asked with an involuntary smile.
“Why not?” he responded. “Try! If you once knew how to read, it will come back to you easily. ‘If no miracle it’s no ill, and if a miracle better still!’”
“But they say that one does not become a saint by looking at a sacred image!”
“Eh,” said the Little Russian, nodding his head. “There are proverbs galore! For example: ‘The less you know, the better you sleep’—isn’t that it? Proverbs are the material the stomach thinks with; it makes bridles for the soul, to be able to control it better. What the stomach needs is a rest, and the soul needs freedom. What letter is this?”
“M.”
“Yes, see how it sprawls. And this?”
Straining her eyes and moving her eyebrows heavily, she recalled with an effort the forgotten letters, and unconsciously yielding to the force of her exertions, she was carried away by them, and forgot herself. But soon her eyes grew tired. At first they became moist with tears of fatigue; and then tears of sorrow rapidly dropped down on the page.
“I’m learning to read,” she said, sobbing. “It’s time for me to die, and I’m just learning to read!”
“You mustn’t cry,” said the Little Russian gently. “It wasn‘t your fault you lived the way you did; and yet you understand that you lived badly. There are thousands of people who could live better than you, but who live like cattle and then boast of how well they live. But what is good in their lives? Today, their day’s work over, they eat, and tomorrow, their day’s work over, they eat, and so on through all their years—work and eat, work and eat! Along with this they bring forth children, and at first amuse themselves with them, but when they, too, begin to eat much, they grow surly and scold: ‘Come on, you gluttons! Hurry along! Grow up quick! It’s time you get to work!’ and they would like to make beasts of burden of their children. But the children begin to work for their own stomachs, and drag their lives along as a thief drags a worthless stolen mop. Their souls are never stirred with joy, never quickened with a thought that melts the heart. Some live like mendicants—always begging; some like thieves—always snatching out of the hands of others. They’ve made thieves’ laws, placed men with sticks over the people, and said to them: ‘Guard our laws; they are very convenient laws; they permit us to suck the blood out of the people!’ They try to squeeze the people from the outside, but the people resist, and so they drive the rules inside so as to crush the reason, too.”
Leaning his elbows on the table and looking into the mother’s face with pensive eyes, he continued in an even, flowing voice:
“Only those are men who strike the chains from off man’s body and from off his reason. And now you, too, are going into this wo
rk according to the best of your ability.”
“I? Now, now! How can I?”
“Why not? It’s just like rain. Every drop goes to nourish the seed! And when you are able to read, then—” He stopped and began to laugh; then rose and paced up and down the room.
“Yes, you must learn to read! And when Pavel gets back, won’t you surprise him, eh?”
“Oh, Andriusha! For a young man everything is simple and easy! But when you have lived to my age, you have lots of trouble, little strength, and no mind at all left.”
In the evening the Little Russian went out. The mother lit a lamp and sat down at a table to knit stockings. But soon she rose again, walked irresolutely into the kitchen, bolted the outer door, and straining her eyebrows walked back into the living room. She pulled down the window curtains, and taking a book from the shelf, sat down at the table again, looked around, bent down over the book, and began to move her lips. When she heard a noise on the street, she started, clapped the book shut with the palm of her hand, and listened intently. And again, now closing, now opening her eyes, she whispered:
“E—z—a.”
With even precision and stern regularity the dull tick of the pendulum marked the dying seconds.
A knock at the door was heard; the mother jumped quickly to her feet, thrust the book on the shelf, and walking up to the door asked anxiously:
