The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Why?”

  Yevsey answered in embarrassment:

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Ugh! Come with me. All right? We can get it for nothing. We need only twenty-five kopeks for beer. If we say we are from the Department of Police, they’ll let us in, and give us girls for nothing. They are afraid of police officers. Everybody is afraid of us.” In a still lower voice, but with more fire and appetite he continued. “And what girls there are! Stout, warm, like down feather-beds! They’re the best, by golly! Some fondle you like your own mother, stroke your head, and so you fall asleep. It’s good!”

  “Have you a mother?”

  “Yes, only I live with my aunt. My mother is a sow. She’s a lewd woman, and lives with a butcher for her support. I don’t go to her. The butcher won’t let me. Once I went there, and he kicked me on the back. Ugh!”

  Zarubin’s little mouse ears quivered, his narrow eyes rolled queerly, he tugged at the black down on his upper lip with a convulsive movement of his fingers, and throbbed all over with excitement.

  “Why are you such a quiet fellow? You ought to be bolder, or else they’ll crush you with work. I was afraid at first, too, so they rode all over me. Come, let’s be friends for the rest of our lives!”

  Though Yevsey did not like Zarubin and was intimidated by his extreme agility, he replied:

  “All right. Let’s be friends.”

  “Your hand. There, it’s done! So tomorrow we’ll go to the girls?”

  “No, I won’t go.”

  They did not notice the Smokestack coming up to them.

  “Well, Yakov, who will do whom?” he growled.

  “We’re not fighting,” said Zarubin, sullenly and disrespectfully.

  “You lie,” said the Smokestack. “Say, Klimkov, don’t give in to him, do you hear?”

  “I do,” said Yevsey rising before him.

  A feeling of reverent curiosity drew him to the man. Once, as usual unexpectedly to himself, he took courage to speak to the Smokestack.

  “Kapiton Ivanovich.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want to ask you, if you please—”

  Without looking at him, the Smokestack said:

  “Get up some spunk! Get up some spunk!”

  “Why do people live so badly?” Yevsey brought out with a great effort.

  The old man raised his heavy brows.

  “What business is it of yours?” he rejoined, looking into Klimkov’s face.

  Yevsey was staggered. The old man’s question was like a blow on the chest. It stood before him in all the power of its inexplicable simplicity.

  “Aha!” said the old man quietly. Then he drew his brows together, whipped a black book from his pocket, and tapping it with his finger said, “The New Testament. Have you read it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you understand it?”

  “No,” answered Yevsey timidly.

  “Read it again. Well, anyway—” Moving his mustache the old man hid the book in his pocket. “I’ve been reading this book for three years, yes, three years. Nobody understands it. It’s a book for children, for the pure of heart. No one can understand it.”

  He grumbled kindly, and Yevsey felt a desire to ask more questions. They did not formulate themselves, however. The old man lighted a cigarette, the smoke enveloped him, and he apparently forgot about his interlocutor. Klimkov glided off quietly. His attraction for the Smokestack had grown stronger, and he thought:

  “It would be good for me to sit nearer to him.”

  Henceforth this became his dream, which, however, came into direct conflict with the dream of Yakov Zarubin.

  “You know what?” Zarubin said in a hot whisper. “Let’s try to get into the Department of Safety, and become political spies. Then what a life we’ll lead! Ugh!”

  Yevsey was silent. The political spies frightened him because of their stern eyes and the mystery surrounding their dark business and dark life.

  CHAPTER X

  An accident happened at home. Dorimedont appeared late at night in torn clothes, without hat or cane, his face bruised and smeared with blood. His bulky body shook, tears ran down his swollen cheeks. He sobbed, and said in a hollow voice:

  “It’s all over! I must go away—to another city—the minute I can.”

  Rayisa silently, without haste, wiped his face with a towel dipped in brandy and water. He started and groaned.

  “Not so rough! Not so rough! The beasts! How they beat me—with clubs. To beat a man with clubs! Please be more careful. Don’t you understand?”

  Yevsey handed the water, removed the spy’s shoes, and listened to his groans. He took secret satisfaction in his tears and blood. Accustomed as he was to see people beaten until blood was drawn, their outcries did not touch him even though he remembered the pain of the pummelings he had received in his childhood.

  “Who did it to you?” asked Rayisa when the spy was settled in bed.

  “They trapped me, surrounded me, in a suburb near a thread factory. Now I must go to another city. I will ask for a transfer.”

  When Yevsey lay down to sleep, the spy and Rayisa began to quarrel aloud.

  “I won’t go,” said the woman in a loud and unusually firm voice.

  “Keep quiet! Don’t excite a sick man!” the spy exclaimed with tears in his voice.

  “I won’t go!”

  “I will make you.”

  In the morning Yevsey understood by Rayisa’s stony face and the spy’s angry excitement that the two did not agree. At supper they began to quarrel again. The spy, who had grown stronger during the day, cursed and swore. His swollen blue face was horrible to look upon, his right hand was in a sling, and he shook his left hand menacingly. Rayisa, pale and imperturbable, rolled her round eyes, and followed the swinging of his red hand.

  “Never, I’ll never go,” she stubbornly repeated, scarcely varying her words.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “But you know I can ruin you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “No, you’ll go.”

  “I won’t.”

  “We shall see. Who are you anyway? Have you forgotten?”

  “It’s all the same to me.”

  “All right.”

  After supper the spy wrapped his face in his scarf, and departed without saying anything. Rayisa sent Yevsey for whiskey. When he had brought her a bottle of table whiskey and another bottle of some dark liquid, she poured a portion of the contents of each into a cup, sipped the entire draught, and remained standing a long time with her eyes screwed up and wiping her neck with the palm of her hand.

  “Do you want some?” she asked, nodding over the bottle. “No? Take a drink. You’ll begin to drink some time or other anyway.”

  Yevsey looked at her high bosom, which had already begun to wither, at her little mouth, into her round dimmed eyes, and remembering how she had been before, he pitied her with a melancholy pity. He felt heavy and gloomy in the presence of this woman.

  “Ah, Yevsey,” she said, “if one could only live his whole life with a clean conscience.”

  Her lips twitched spasmodically. She filled a cup and offered it to him.

  “Drink!”

  He shook his head in declination.

  “You little coward!” she laughed quietly. “Life is hard for you—I understand. But why you live I don’t understand. Why? Tell me.”

  “Just so,” answered Yevsey gloomily. “I live. What else is one to do?”

  Rayisa looked at him, and said tenderly:

  “I think you are going to choke yourself.”

  Yevsey was aggrieved and sighed. He settled himself more firmly in his chair.

  Rayisa paced through the room, stepping lazily and inaudibly.
She stopped before a mirror, and looked at her face long without winking. She felt her full white neck with her hands, her shoulders quivered, her hands dropped heavily, and she began again to pace the room, her hips moving up and down. She hummed without opening her mouth. Her voice was stifled like the groan of one who suffers from toothache.

  A lamp covered with a green shade was burning on the table. Through the window the round disk of the moon could be seen in the vacant heavens. The moon, too, looked green, as it hung there motionless like the shadows in the room, and it augured ill.

  “I am going to bed,” said Yevsey rising from his chair.

  Rayisa did not answer, and did not look at him. Then he stepped to the door, and repeated in a lower voice:

  “Good-night. I am going to sleep.”

  “Go, I’m not keeping you. Go.”

  Yevsey understood that Rayisa felt nauseated. He wanted to tell her something.

  “Can I do anything for you?” he inquired, stopping at the door.

  She looked into his face with her weary sleepy eyes.

  “No, nothing,” she answered quietly after a pause.

  She walked up and down in the room for a long time. Yevsey heard the rustle of her skirt and the doleful sound of her song, and the clinking of the bottles. Occasionally she coughed dully.

  Rayisa’s composed words stood motionless in Yevsey’s heart, “I think you are going to choke yourself.” They lay upon him heavily, pressing like stones.

  In the middle of the night the spy awoke Klimkov rudely.

  “Where is Rayisa?” he asked in a loud whisper. “Where did she go? Has she been gone long? You don’t know? You fool!”

  Dorimedont left the room hastily, then thrust his head through the door, and asked sternly:

  “What was she doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Was she drinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “The pig!”

  The spy pulled his ear, and disappeared.

  “Why did he speak in a whisper?” Yevsey wondered.

  The light in the lamp flickered and went out. The spy uttered an oath, then began to strike matches, which flared up, frightening the darkness, and went out. Finally a pale ray from the room reached Yevsey’s bed. It quivered timidly, and seemed to seek something in the narrow ante-room. Dorimedont entered again. One of his eyes was closed from the swelling, the other, light and restless, quickly looked about the walls, and halted at Yevsey’s face.

  “Didn’t Rayisa say anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Such a stupid woman!”

  Yevsey felt awkward to be lying down in the presence of the spy, and he raised himself.

  “Stay where you are! Stay where you are!” said Dorimedont hastily, and sat down on the bed at Yevsey’s feet.

  “If you were a year older,” he began in an unusually kind, quiet, and thoughtful tone, “I would get you into the Department of Safety as a political agent. It’s a very good position. The salary is not large, but if you are successful, you get rewarded. And it’s a free life. You can go wherever you want, have a good time, yes, indeed. Rayisa is a beautiful woman, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, beautiful,” agreed Yevsey.

  “Yes, ahem,” said the spy, with a sigh and a strange smile. He kept stroking the bandage on his head with his left hand, and pinching his ear. “Woman you can never have enough of—the mother of temptation and sin.—Where did she go? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Yevsey quietly, beginning to be afraid of something.

  “Of course. She has no paramour. No men came to her. Do you know what, Yevsey? Don’t be in a hurry with women. You have time enough for that. They cost dear, brother. Here am I, who have made thousands and thousands of rubles, and what’s become of them?”

  Heavy, cumbersome, bound with rags, he shook before Yevsey’s eyes, and seemed ready to fall to pieces. His dull voice sounded uneasy. His left hand constantly felt of his head and his breast.

  “Ah, I got mixed up with them a great deal!” he said peering suspiciously around the dark corners of the room. “It’s troublesome, but you can’t get along without them. Nothing better in the world. Some say cards are better, but card-players can’t get along without women either. Nor does hunting make you proof against women. Nothing does.”

  In the morning Klimkov saw the spy sleeping on the sofa with his clothes on. The room was filled with smoke and the smell of kerosene from the lamp, which had not been extinguished. Dorimedont was snoring, his large mouth wide open, his sound hand dangling over the floor. He was repulsive and pitiful.

  It grew light, and a pale square piece of sky peeped into the little window. The flies awoke, and buzzed plaintively, darting about on the grey background of the window. Besides the smell of kerosene the room was penetrated with some other odor, thick and irritating.

  After putting out the lamp Yevsey for some reason washed himself in a great hurry, dressed, and started for the office.

  CHAPTER XI

  At about noon Zarubin called out to Yevsey.

  “Hey there, Klimkov, you know Rayisa Petrovna Fialkovskaya, she’s your master Lukin’s mistress, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “There now!”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Yevsey hastily.

  “She cut her throat.”

  Yevsey rose to his feet, stung in the back by a sharp blow of terror.

  “She was just found in a store-room. Let’s go and look.”

  Zarubin ran off, announcing to the clerks on his way:

  “I told you she was Dorimedont Lukin’s mistress.”

  He shouted the word “mistress” with particular emphasis and zest.

  Yevsey looked after him with wide-open eyes. Before him in the air hung Rayisa’s head, her heavy luxuriant hair flowed from it in streams, her face was pale green, her lips were tightly compressed, and instead of eyes there were deep dark stains. Everything round about him was hidden behind the dead face, which Yevsey, numb with terror and pity, was unable to remove from his vision.

  “Why don’t you go to lunch?” asked the Smokestack.

  Scarcely anybody remained in the office. Yevsey sighed and answered:

  “My mistress cut her throat.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, go to the café.”

  The Smokestack walked off carefully picking his steps. Yevsey jumped up and seized his hand:

  “Take me.”

  “Come.”

  “No, take me to stay with you altogether,” Yevsey besought him.

  The Smokestack bent toward him.

  “What do you mean by ‘altogether?’”

  “To your rooms—to live with you—for all the time.”

  “Aha! Well, in the meantime let’s get our lunch. Come on.”

  In the café a canary bird kept up a piercing song. The old man silently ate fried potatoes. Yevsey was unable to eat, and looked into his companion’s face inquiringly.

  “So you want to live with me? Well, come on.”

  When Yevsey heard these words, he instantly felt that they partitioned him off from the terrible life. Encouraged he said gratefully:

  “I will clean your shoes for you.”

  The Smokestack thrust his long foot shod in a torn boot from under the table.

  “You needn’t clean this one. How about your mistress? Was she a good woman?”

  The old man’s eyes looked directly and kindly, and seemed to say:

  “Speak the truth.”

  “I don’t know,” said Yevsey, dropping his head, and for the first time feeling that he used the phrase very often.

  “So?” said the Smokestack. “So?”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Yevsey, disappointed with himself. Suddenly he grew bold. “I
see this and that; but what it is, what for, why, I cannot understand. And there must be another life.”

  “Another?” repeated the Smokestack, screwing up his eyes.

  “Yes. It would be impossible otherwise.”

  The Smokestack smiled quietly. He hit his knife on the table, and shouted to the waiter:

  “A bottle of beer. So it can’t be otherwise? That’s curious. Yes—we’ll see who will do whom.”

  “Do, please, let me live with you,” Yevsey repeated.

  “Well, we’ll live together. All right.”

  “I’ll come to you today.”

  “Come on.”

  The Smokestack began to drink his beer in silence.

  When they returned to the office, they found Dorimedont Lukin there, who hastened up to Yevsey. His bandages had loosened, the one eye visible was suffused with blood.

  “Did you hear about Rayisa?” he inquired gravely.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “She did it out of—it was drink that did it, upon my word,” whispered the spy, putting his uninjured hand to his breast.

  “I won’t go back there any more,” said Yevsey.

  “What then? Where will you go?”

  “I am going to live with Kapiton Ivanovich.”

  “Um-m-m!”

  Dorimedont suddenly became embarrassed, and looked around.

  “Take care! He’s not in his right senses. They keep him here from pity. He’s even a dangerous man. Be careful with him. Keep mum about all you know.”

  Yevsey thought the spy would fly into a passion. He was surprised at his whispering, and listened attentively to what he said.

  “I am going to leave the city. Good-by. I am going to tell my chief about you, and when he needs a new man, he will take you, rest assured. Move your bed and whatever there is in my rooms to your new quarters. Take the things today, do you hear? I’ll go from there this evening to a hotel. Here are five rubles for you. They’ll be useful to you. Now, keep quiet, do you understand?”

  He continued to whisper long and rapidly, his eyes running about suspiciously on all sides, and when the door opened he started from his chair as if to run away. The smell of an ointment emanated from him. He seemed to have grown less bulky and lower in stature, and to have lost his importance.

  “Good-by,” he said, placing his hand on Yevsey’s shoulder. “Live carefully, don’t trust people, especially women. Know the value of money. Buy with silver, save the gold, don’t scorn copper, defend yourself with iron—a Cossack saying. I am a Cossack, you know.”