by Maxim Gorky
At first the sounds failed to touch the mother. They were incomprehensible to her, nothing but a ringing chaos. Her ear could not gather a melody from the intricate mass of notes. Half asleep she looked at Nikolay sitting with his feet crossed under him at the other end of the long sofa, and at the severe profile of Sofya with her head enveloped in a mass of golden hair. The sun shone into the room. A single ray, trembling pensively, at first lighted up her hair and shoulder, then settled upon the keys of the piano, and quivered under the pressure of her fingers. The branches of the acacia rocked to and fro outside the window. The room became music-filled, and unawares to her, the mother’s heart was stirred. Three notes of nearly the same pitch, resonant as the voice of Fedya Mazin, sparkled in the stream of sounds, like three silvery fish in a brook. At times another note united with these in a simple song, which enfolded the heart in a kind yet sad caress. She began to watch for them, to await their warble, and she heard only their music, distinguished from the tumultuous chaos of sound, to which her ears gradually became deaf.
And for some reason there rose before her out of the obscure depths of her past, wrongs long forgotten.
Once her husband came home late, extremely intoxicated. He grasped her hand, threw her from the bed to the floor, kicked her in the side with his foot, and said:
“Get out! I’m sick of you! Get out!”
In order to protect herself from his blows, she quickly gathered her two-year-old son into her arms, and kneeling covered herself with his body as with a shield. He cried, struggled in her arms, frightened, naked, and warm.
“Get out!” bellowed her husband.
She jumped to her feet, rushed into the kitchen, threw a jacket over her shoulders, wrapped the baby in a shawl, and silently, without outcries or complaints, barefoot, in nothing but a shirt under her jacket, walked out into the street. It was in the month of May, and the night was fresh. The cold, damp dust of the street stuck to her feet, and got between her toes. The child wept and struggled. She opened her breast, pressed her son to her body, and pursued by fear walked down the street, quietly lulling the baby.
It began to grow light. She was afraid and ashamed lest some one come out on the street and see her half naked. She turned toward the marsh, and sat down on the ground under a thick group of aspens. She sat there for a long time, embraced by the night, motionless, looking into the darkness with wide-open eyes, and timidly wailing a lullaby—a lullaby for her baby, which had fallen asleep, and a lullaby for her outraged heart.
A gray bird darted over her head, and flew far away. It awakened her, and brought her to her feet. Then, shivering with cold, she walked home to confront the horror of blows and new insults.
For the last time a heavy and resonant chord heaved a deep breath, indifferent and cold; it sighed and died away.
Sofya turned around, and asked her brother softly:
“Did you like it?”
“Very much,” he said, nodding his head. “Very much.”
Sofya looked at the mother’s face, but said nothing.
“They say,” said Nikolay thoughtfully, throwing himself deeper back on the sofa, “that you should listen to music without thinking. But I can’t.”
“Nor can I,” said Sofya, striking a melodious chord.
“I listened, and it seemed to me that people were putting their questions to nature, that they grieved and groaned, and protested angrily, and shouted, ‘Why?’ Nature does not answer, but goes on calmly creating, incessantly, forever. In her silence is heard her answer: ‘I do not know.’”
The mother listened to Nikolay’s quiet words without understanding them, and without desiring to understand. Her bosom echoed with her reminiscences, and she wanted more music. Side by side with her memories the thought unfolded itself before her: “Here live people, a brother and sister, in friendship; they live peacefully and calmly—they have music and books—they don’t swear at each other—they don’t drink whisky—they don’t quarrel for a relish—they have no desire to insult each other, the way all the people at the bottom do.”
Sofya quickly lighted a cigarette; she smoked almost without intermission.
“This used to be the favorite piece of Kostya,” she said, as a veil of smoke quickly enveloped her. She again struck a low mournful chord. “How I used to love to play for him! You remember how well he translated music into language?” She paused and smiled. “How sensitive he was! What fine feelings he had—so responsive to everything—so fully a man!”
“She must be recalling memories of her husband,” the mother noted, “and she smiles!”
“How much happiness that man gave me!” said Sofya in a low voice, accompanying her words with light sounds on the keys. “What a capacity he had for living! He was always aglow with joy, buoyant, childlike joy!”
“Childlike,” repeated the mother to herself, and shook her head as if agreeing with something.
“Ye-es,” said Nikolay, pulling his beard, “his soul was always singing.”
“When I played this piece for him the first time, he put it in these words.” Sofya turned her face to her brother, and slowly stretched out her arms. Encircled with blue streaks of smoke, she spoke in a low, rapturous voice. “In a barren sea of the far north, under the gray canopy of the cold heavens, stands a lonely black island, an unpeopled rock, covered with ice; the smoothly polished shore descends abruptly into the gray, foaming billows. The transparently blue blocks of ice inhospitably float on the shaking cold water and press against the dark rock of the island. Their knocking resounds mournfully in the dead stillness of the barren sea. They have been floating a long time on the bottomless depths, and the waves splashing about them have quietly borne them toward the lonely rock in the midst of the sea. The sound is grewsome as they break against the shore and against one another, sadly inquiring: ‘Why?’”
Sofya flung away the cigarette she had begun to smoke, turned to the piano, and again began to play the ringing plaints, the plaints of the lonely blocks of ice by the shore of the barren island in the sea of the far north.
The mother was overcome with unendurable sadness as she listened to the simple sketch. It blended strangely with her past, into which her recollections kept boring deeper and deeper.
“In music one can hear everything,” said Nikolay quietly.
Sofya turned toward the mother, and asked:
“Do you mind my noise?”
The mother was unable to restrain her slight irritation.
“I told you not to pay any attention to me. I sit here and listen and think about myself.”
“No, you ought to understand,” said Sofya. “A woman can’t help understanding music, especially when in grief.”
She struck the keys powerfully, and a loud shout went forth, as if some one had suddenly heard horrible news, which pierced him to the heart, and wrenched from him this troubled sound. Young voices trembled in affright, people rushed about in haste, pellmell. Again a loud, angry voice shouted out, drowning all other sounds. Apparently a catastrophe had occurred, in which the chief source of pain was an affront offered to some one. It evoked not complaints, but wrath. Then some kindly and powerful person appeared, who began to sing, just like Andrey, a simple beautiful song, a song of exhortation and summons to himself. The voices of the bass notes grumbled in a dull, offended tone.
Sofya played a long time. The music disquieted the mother, and aroused in her a desire to ask of what it was speaking. Indistinct sensations and thoughts passed through her mind in quick succession. Sadness and anxiety gave place to moments of calm joy. A swarm of unseen birds seemed to be flying about in the room, penetrating everywhere, touching the heart with caressing wings, soothing and at the same time alarming it. The feelings in the mother’s breast could not be fixed in words. They emboldened her heart with perplexed hopes, they fondled it in a fresh and firm embrace.
A kindly i
mpulse came to her to say something good both to these two persons and to all people in general. She smiled softly, intoxicated by the music, feeling herself capable of doing work helpful to the brother and sister. Her eyes roved about in search of something to do for them. She saw nothing but to walk out into the kitchen quietly, and prepare the samovar. But this did not satisfy her desire. It struggled stubbornly in her breast, and as she poured out the tea she began to speak excitedly with an agitated smile. She seemed to bestow the words as a warm caress impartially on Sofya and Nikolay and on herself.
“We people at the bottom feel everything; but it is hard for us to speak out our hearts. Our thoughts float about in us. We are ashamed because, although we understand, we are not able to express them; and often from shame we are angry at our thoughts, and at those who inspire them. We drive them away from ourselves. For life, you see, is so troublesome. From all sides we get blows and beatings; we want rest, and there come the thoughts that rouse our souls and demand things of us.”
Nikolay listened, and nodded his head, rubbing his eyeglasses briskly, while Sofya looked at her, her large eyes wide open and the forgotten cigarette burning to ashes. She sat half turned from the piano, supple and shapely, at times touching the keys lightly with the slender fingers of her right hand. The pensive chord blended delicately with the speech of the mother, as she quickly invested her new feelings and thoughts in simple, hearty words.
“Now I am able to say something about myself, about my people, because I understand life. I began to understand it when I was able to make comparisons. Before that time there was nobody to compare myself with. In our state, you see, all lead the same life, and now that I see how others live, I look back at my life, and the recollection is hard and bitter. But it is impossible to return, and even if you could, you wouldn’t find your youth again. And I think I understand a great deal. Here, I am looking at you, and I recollect all your people whom I’ve seen.” She lowered her voice and continued: “Maybe I don’t say things right, and I needn’t say them, because you know them yourself; but I’m just speaking for myself. You at once set me alongside of you. You don’t need anything of me; you can’t make use of me; you can’t get any enjoyment out of me, I know it. And day after day my heart grows, thank God! It grows in goodness, and I wish good for everybody. This is my thanks that I’m saying to you.” Tears of happy gratitude affected her voice, and looking at them with a smile in her eyes, she went on: “I want to open my heart before you, so that you may see how I wish your welfare.”
“We see it,” said Nikolay in a low voice. “You’re making a holiday for us.”
“What do you think I imagined?” the mother asked with a smile and lowering her voice. “I imagined I found a treasure, and became rich, and I could endow everybody. Maybe it’s only my stupidity that’s run away with me.”
“Don’t speak like that,” said Sofya seriously. “You mustn’t be ashamed.”
The mother began to speak again, telling Sofya and Nikolay of herself, her poor life, her wrongs, and patient sufferings. Suddenly she stopped in her narrative. It seemed to her that she was turning aside, away from herself, and speaking about somebody else. In simple words, without malice, with a sad smile on her lips, she drew the monotonous, gray sketch of sorrowful days. She enumerated the beatings she had received from her husband; and herself marveled at the trifling causes that led to them and her own inability to avert them.
The brother and sister listened to her in attentive silence, impressed by the deep significance of the unadorned story of a human being, who was regarded as cattle are regarded, and who, without a murmur, for a long time felt herself to be that which she was held to be. It seemed to them as if thousands, nay millions, of lives spoke through her mouth. Her existence had been commonplace and simple; but such is the simple, ordinary existence of multitudes, and her story, assuming ever larger proportions in their eyes, took on the significance of a symbol. Nikolay, his elbows on the table, and his head leaning on his hands, looked at her through his glasses without moving, his eyes screwed up intently. Sofya flung herself back on her chair. Sometimes she trembled, and at times muttered to herself, shaking her head in disapproval. Her face grew paler. Her eyes deepened.
“Once I thought myself unhappy. My life seemed a fever,” said Sofya, inclining her head. “That was when I was in exile. It was in a small district town. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about except myself. I swept all my misfortunes together into one heap, and weighed them, from lack of anything better to do. Then I quarreled with my father, whom I loved. I was expelled from the gymnasium, and insulted—the prison, the treachery of a comrade near to me, the arrest of my husband, again prison and exile, the death of my husband. But all my misfortunes, and ten times their number, are not worth a month of your life, Pelagueya Nilovna. Your torture continued daily through years. From where do the people draw their power to suffer?”
“They get used to it,” responded the mother with a sigh.
“I thought I knew that life,” said Nikolay softly. “But when I hear it spoken of—not when my books, not when my incomplete impressions speak about it, but she herself with a living tongue—it is horrible. And the details are horrible, the inanities, the seconds of which the years are made.”
The conversation sped along, thoughtfully and quietly. It branched out and embraced the whole of common life on all sides. The mother became absorbed in her recollections. From her dim past she drew to light each daily wrong, and gave a massive picture of the huge, dumb horror in which her youth had been sunk. Finally she said:
“Oh! How I’ve been chattering to you! It’s time for you to rest. I’ll never be able to tell you all.”
The brother and sister took leave of her in silence. Nikolay seemed to the mother to bow lower to her than ever before and to press her hand more firmly. Sofya accompanied her to her room, and stopping at the door said softly: “Now rest. I hope you have a good night.”
Her voice blew a warm breath on the mother, and her gray eyes embraced the mother’s face in a caress. She took Sofya’s hand and pressing it in hers, answered: “Thank you! You are good people.”
CHAPTER III
Three days passed in incessant conversations with Sofya and Nikolay. The mother continued to recount tales of the past, which stubbornly arose from the depths of her awakened soul, and disturbed even herself. Her past demanded an explanation. The attention with which the brother and sister listened to her opened her heart more and more widely, freeing her from the narrow, dark cage of her former life.
On the fourth day, early in the morning, she and Sofya appeared before Nikolay as burgher women, poorly clad in worn chintz skirts and blouses, with birch-bark sacks on their shoulders, and canes in their hands. This costume reduced Sofya’s height and gave a yet sterner appearance to her pale face.
“You look as if you had walked about monasteries all your life,” observed Nikolay on taking leave of his sister, and pressed her hand warmly. The mother again remarked the simplicity and calmness of their relation to each other. It was hard for her to get used to it. No kissing, no affectionate words passed between them; but they behaved so sincerely, so amicably and solicitously toward each other. In the life she had been accustomed to, people kissed a great deal and uttered many sentimental words, but always bit at one another like hungry dogs.
The women walked down the street in silence, reached the open country, and strode on side by side along the wide beaten road between a double row of birches.
“Won’t you get tired?” the mother asked.
“Do you think I haven’t done much walking? All this is an old story to me.”
With a merry smile, as if speaking of some glorious childhood frolics, Sofya began to tell the mother of her revolutionary work. She had had to live under a changed name, use counterfeit documents, disguise herself in various costumes in order to hide from spies, carry hundreds and hundreds
of pounds of illegal books through various cities, arrange escapes for comrades in exile, and escort them abroad. She had had a printing press fixed up in her quarters, and when on learning of it the gendarmes appeared to make a search, she succeeded in a minute’s time before their arrival in dressing as a servant, and walking out of the house just as her guests were entering at the gate. She met them there. Without an outer wrap, a light kerchief on her head, a tin kerosene can in her hand, she traversed the city from one end to the other in the biting cold of a winter’s day. Another time she had just arrived in a strange city to pay a visit to friends. When she was already on the stairs leading to their quarters, she noticed that a search was being conducted in their apartments. To turn back was too late. Without a second’s hesitation she boldly rang the bell at the door of a lower floor, and walked in with her traveling bag to unknown people. She frankly explained the position she was in.
“You can hand me over to the gendarmes if you want to; but I don’t think you will,” she said confidently.
