The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  Pavel explained.

  “We don’t need it!” Yefim said, replacing the book on the shelf.

  Rybin sighed noisily, and said:

  “The peasant is not so much interested to know where the land came from as where it’s gone to, how it’s been snatched from underneath his feet by the gentry. It doesn’t matter to him whether it’s fixed or whether it revolves—that’s of no importance—you can hang it on a rope, if you want to, provided it feeds him; you can nail it to the skies, provided it gives him enough to eat.”

  “‘The History of Slavery,’” Yefim read out again, and asked Pavel: “Is it about us?”

  “Here’s an account of Russian serfdom, too,” said Pavel, giving him another book. Yefim took it, turned it in his hands, and putting it aside, said calmly:

  “That’s out of date.”

  “Have you an apportionment of land for yourself?” inquired Pavel.

  “We? Yes, we have. We are three brothers, and our portion is about ten acres and a half—all sand—good for polishing brass, but poor for making bread.” After a pause he continued: “I’ve freed myself from the soil. What’s the use? It does not feed; it ties one’s hands. This is the fourth year that I’m working as a hired man. I’ve got to become a soldier this fall. Uncle Mikhaïl says: ‘Don’t go. Now,’ he says, ‘the soldiers are being sent to beat the people.’ However, I think I’ll go. The army existed at the time of Stepan Timofeyevich Razin and Pugachev. The time has come to make an end of it. Don’t you think so?” he asked, looking firmly at Pavel.

  “Yes, the time has come.” The answer was accompanied by a smile. “But it’s hard. You must know what to say to soldiers, and how to say it.”

  “We’ll learn; we’ll know how,” Yefim said.

  “And if the superiors catch you at it, they may shoot you down,” Pavel concluded, looking curiously at Yefim.

  “They will show no mercy,” the peasant assented calmly, and resumed his examination of the books.

  “Drink your tea, Yefim; we’ve got to leave soon,” said Rybin.

  “Directly.” And Yefim asked again: “Revolution is an uprising, isn’t it?”

  Andrey came, red, perspiring, and dejected. He shook Yefim’s hand without saying anything, sat down by Rybin’s side, and smiled as he looked at him.

  “What’s the trouble? Why so blue?” Rybin asked, tapping his knee.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you a workingman, too?” asked Yefim, nodding his head toward the Little Russian.

  “Yes,” Andrey answered. “Why?”

  “This is the first time he’s seen factory workmen,” explained Rybin. “He says they’re different from others.”

  “How so?” Pavel asked.

  Yefim looked carefully at Andrey and said:

  “You have sharp bones; peasants’ bones are rounder.”

  “The peasant stands more firmly on his feet,” Rybin supplemented. “He feels the ground under him although he does not possess it. Yet he feels the earth. But the factory workingman is something like a bird. He has no home. Today he’s here, tomorrow there. Even his wife can’t attach him to the same spot. At the least provocation—farewell, my dear! and off he goes to look for something better. But the peasant wants to improve himself just where he is without moving off the spot. There’s your mother!” And Rybin went out into the kitchen.

  Yefim approached Pavel, and with embarrassment asked:

  “Perhaps you will give me a book?”

  “Certainly.”

  The peasant’s eyes flashed, and he said rapidly:

  “I’ll return it. Some of our folks bring tar not far from here. They will return it for me. Thank you! Nowadays a book is like a candle in the night to us.”

  Rybin, already dressed and tightly girt, came in and said to Yefim:

  “Come, it’s time for us to go.”

  “Now, I have something to read!” exclaimed Yefim, pointing to the book and smiling inwardly. When he had gone, Pavel animatedly said, turning to Andrey:

  “Did you notice those fellows?”

  “Y-yes!” slowly uttered the Little Russian. “Like clouds in the sunset—thick, dark clouds, moving slowly.”

  “Mikhaïl!” exclaimed the mother. “He looks as if he had never been in a factory! A peasant again. And how formidable he looks!”

  “I’m sorry you weren’t here,” said Pavel to Andrey, who was sitting at the table, staring gloomily into his glass of tea. “You could have seen the play of hearts. You always talk about the heart. Rybin got up a lot of steam; he upset me, crushed me. I couldn’t even reply to him. How distrustful he is of people, and how cheaply he values them! Mother is right. That man has a formidable power in him.”

  “I noticed it,” the Little Russian replied glumly. “They have poisoned people. When the peasants rise up, they’ll overturn absolutely everything! They need bare land, and they will lay it bare, tear down everything.” He spoke slowly, and it was evident that his mind was on something else. The mother cautiously tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Pull yourself together, Andriusha.”

  “Wait a little, my dear mother, my own!” he begged softly and kindly. “All this is so ugly—although I didn’t mean to do any harm. Wait!” And suddenly rousing himself, he said, striking the table with his hand: “Yes, Pavel, the peasant will lay the land bare for himself when he rises to his feet. He will burn everything up, as if after a plague, so that all traces of his wrongs will vanish in ashes.”

  “And then he will get in our way,” Pavel observed softly.

  “It’s our business to prevent that. We are nearer to him; he trusts us; he will follow us.”

  “Do you know, Rybin proposes that we should publish a newspaper for the village?”

  “We must do it, too. As soon as possible.”

  Pavel laughed and said:

  “I feel bad I didn’t argue with him.”

  “We’ll have a chance to argue with him still,” the Little Russian rejoined. “You keep on playing your flute; whoever has gay feet, if they haven’t grown into the ground, will dance to your tune. Rybin would probably have said that we don’t feel the ground under us, and need not, either. Therefore it’s our business to shake it. Shake it once, and the people will be loosened from it; shake it once more, and they’ll tear themselves away.”

  The mother smiled.

  “Everything seems to be simple to you, Andriusha.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s simple,” said the Little Russian, and added gloomily: “Like life.” A few minutes later he said: “I’ll go take a walk in the field.”

  “After the bath? The wind will blow through you,” the mother warned.

  “Well, I need a good airing.”

  “Look out, you’ll catch a cold,” Pavel said affectionately. “You’d better lie down and try to sleep.”

  “No, I’m going.” He put on his wraps, and went out without speaking.

  “It’s hard for him,” the mother sighed.

  “You know what?” Pavel observed to her. “It’s very good that you started to say ‘thou’ to him after that.”

  She looked at him in astonishment, and after reflecting a moment, said:

  “Um, I didn’t even notice how it came. It came all of itself. He has grown so near to me. I can’t tell you in words just how I feel. Oh, such a misfortune!”

  “You have a good heart, mamma,” Pavel said softly.

  “I’m very glad if I have. If I could only help you in some way, all of you. If I only could!”

  “Don’t fear, you will.”

  She laughed softly:

  “I can’t help fearing; that’s exactly what I can’t help. But thank you for the good word, my dear son.”

  “All right, mother; don’t let’s talk about it any more. Know that I love you; and I thank
you most heartily.”

  She walked into the kitchen in order not to annoy him with her tears.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Several days later Vyesovshchikov came in, as shabby, untidy, and disgruntled as ever.

  “Haven’t you heard who killed Isay?” He stopped in his clumsy pacing of the room to turn to Pavel.

  “No!” Pavel answered briefly.

  “There you got a man who wasn’t squeamish about the job! And I’d always been preparing to do it myself. It was my job—just the thing for me!”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Nikolay,” Pavel said in a friendly manner.

  “Now, really, what’s the matter with you?” interposed the mother kindly. “You have a soft heart, and yet you keep barking like a vicious dog. What do you go on that way for?”

  At this moment she was actually pleased to see Nikolay. Even his pockmarked face looked more agreeable to her. She pitied him as never before.

  “Well, I’m not fit for anything but jobs like that!” said Nikolay dully, shrugging his shoulders. “I keep thinking, and thinking where my place in the world is. There is no place for me! The people require to be spoken to, and I cannot. I see everything; I feel all the people’s wrongs; but I cannot express myself: I have a dumb soul.” He went over to Pavel with drooping head; and scraping his fingers on the table, he said plaintively, and so unlike himself, childishly, sadly: “Give me some hard work to do, comrade. I can’t live this life any longer. It’s so senseless, so useless. You are all working in the movement, and I see that it is growing, and I’m outside of it all. I haul boards and beams. Is it possible to live for the sake of hauling timber? Give me some hard work.”

  Pavel clasped his hand, pulling him toward himself.

  “We will!”

  From behind the curtains resounded the Little Russian’s voice:

  “Nikolay, I’ll teach you typesetting, and you’ll work as a compositor for us. Yes?”

  Nikolay went over to him and said:

  “If you’ll teach me that, I’ll give you my knife.”

  “To the devil with your knife!” exclaimed the Little Russian and burst out laughing.

  “It’s a good knife,” Nikolay insisted. Pavel laughed, too.

  Vyesovshchikov stopped in the middle of the room and asked:

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Of course,” replied the Little Russian, jumping out of bed. “I’ll tell you what! Let’s take a walk in the fields! The night is fine; there’s bright moonshine. Let’s go!”

  “All right,” said Pavel.

  “And I’ll go with you, too!” declared Nikolay. “I like to hear you laugh, Little Russian.”

  “And I like to hear you promise presents,” answered the Little Russian, smiling.

  While Andrey was dressing in the kitchen, the mother scolded him:

  “Dress warmer! You’ll get sick.” And when they all had left, she watched them through the window; then looked at the ikon, and said softly: “God help them!”

  She turned off the lamp and began to pray alone in the moonlit room.

  * * * *

  The days flew by in such rapid succession that the mother could not give much thought to the first of May. Only at night, when, exhausted by the noise and the exciting bustle of the day, she went to bed, tired and worn out, her heart would begin to ache.

  “Oh, dear, if it would only be over soon!”

  At dawn, when the factory whistle blew, the son and the Little Russian, after hastily drinking tea and snatching a bite, would go, leaving a dozen or so small commissions for the mother. The whole day long she would move around like a squirrel in a wheel, cook dinner, and boil lilac-colored gelatin and glue for the proclamations. Some people would come, leave notes with her to deliver to Pavel, and disappear, infecting her with their excitement.

  The leaflets appealing to the working people to celebrate the first of May flooded the village and the factory. Every night they were posted on the fences, even on the doors of the police station; and every day they were found in the factory. In the mornings the police would go around, swearing, tearing down and scraping off the lilac-covered bills from the fences. At noon, however, these bills would fly over the streets again, rolling to the feet of the passers-by. Spies were sent from the city to stand at the street corners and carefully scan the working people on their gay passages from and to the factory at dinner time. Everybody was pleased to see the impotence of the police, and even the elder workingmen would smile at one another:

  “Things are happening, aren’t they?”

  All over, people would cluster into groups hotly discussing the stirring appeals. Life was at boiling point. This spring it held more of interest to everybody, it brought forth something new to all; for some it was a good excuse to excite themselves—they could pour out their malicious oaths on the agitators; to others, it brought perplexed anxiety as well as hope; to others again, the minority, an acute delight in the consciousness of being the power that set the village astir.

  Pavel and Andrey scarcely ever went to bed. They came home just before the morning whistle sounded, tired, hoarse, and pale. The mother knew that they held meetings in the woods and the marsh; that squads of mounted police galloped around the village, that spies were crawling all over, holding up and searching single workingmen, dispersing groups, and sometimes making an arrest. She understood that her son and Andrey might be arrested any night. Sometimes she thought that this would be the best thing for them.

  Strangely enough, the investigation of the murder of Isay, the record clerk, suddenly ceased. For two days the local police questioned the people in regard to the matter, examining about ten men or so, and finally lost interest in the affair.

  Marya Korsunova, in a chat with the mother, reflected the opinion of the police, with whom she associated as amicably as with everybody:

  “How is it possible to find the guilty man? That morning some hundred people met Isay, and ninety of them, if not more, might have given him the blow. During these eight years he has galled everybody.”

  The Little Russian changed considerably. His face became hollow-cheeked; his eyelids got heavy and drooped over his round eyes, half covering them. His smiles were wrung from him unwillingly, and two thin wrinkles were drawn from his nostrils to the corners of his lips. He talked less about everyday matters; on the other hand, he was more frequently enkindled with a passionate fire; and he intoxicated his listeners with his ecstatic words about the future, about the bright, beautiful holiday, when they would celebrate the triumph of freedom and reason. Listening to his words, the mother felt that he had gone further than anybody else toward the great, glorious day, and that he saw the joys of that future more vividly than the rest. When the investigations of Isay’s murder ceased, he said in disgust and smiling sadly:

  “It’s not only the people they treat like trash, but even the very men whom they set on the people like dogs. They have no concern for their faithful Judases, they care only for their shekels—only for them.” And after a sullen silence, he added: “And I pity that man the more I think of him. I didn’t intend to kill him—didn’t want to!”

  “Enough, Andrey,” said Pavel severely.

  “You happened to knock against something rotten, and it fell to pieces,” added the mother in a low voice.

  “You’re right—but that’s no consolation.”

  He often spoke in this way. In his mouth the words assumed a peculiar, universal significance, bitter and corrosive.

  At last, it was the first of May! The whistle shrilled as usual, powerful and peremptory. The mother, who hadn’t slept a minute during the night, jumped out of bed, made a fire in the samovar, which had been prepared the evening before, and was about, as always, to knock at the door of her son’s and Andrey’s room, when, with a wave of her hand she recollected the day, and went to seat herself at t
he window, leaning her cheek on her hand.

  Clusters of light clouds, white and rosy, sailed swiftly across the pale blue sky, like huge birds frightened by the piercing shriek of the escaping steam. The mother watched the clouds, absorbed in herself. Her head was heavy, her eyes dry and inflamed from the sleepless night. A strange calm possessed her breast, her heart was beating evenly, and her mind dwelt on only common, everyday things.

  “I prepared the samovar too early; it will boil away. Let them sleep longer today; they’ve worn themselves out, both of them.”

  A cheerful ray of sun looked into the room. She held her hand out to it, and with the other gently patted the bright young beam, smiling kindly and thoughtfully. Then she rose, removed the pipe from the samovar, trying not to make a noise, washed herself, and began to pray, crossing herself piously, and noiselessly moving her lips. Her face was radiant, and her right eyebrow kept rising gradually and suddenly dropping.

  The second whistle blew more softly with less assurance, a tremor in its thick and mellow sound. It seemed to the mother that the whistle lasted longer today than ever. The clear, musical voice of the Little Russian sounded in the room:

  “Pavel, do you hear? They’re calling.”

  The mother heard the patter of bare feet on the floor and some one yawn with gusto.

  “The samovar is ready,” she cried.

  “We’re getting up,” Pavel answered merrily.

  “The sun is rising,” said the Little Russian. “The clouds are racing; they’re out of place today.” He went into the kitchen all disheveled but jolly after his sleep. “Good morning, mother dear; how did you sleep?”

  The mother went to him and whispered:

  “Andriusha, keep close to him.”

  “Certainly. As long as it depends on us, we’ll always stick to each other, you may be sure.”

  “What’s that whispering about?” Pavel asked.

  “Nothing. She told me to wash myself better, so the girls will look at me,” replied the Little Russian, going out on the porch to wash himself.