The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Yourself first?” suggested Piotr smiling.

  Sasha sniffed without answering, as if in a delirium.

  “All those liberals, generals, revolutionists, dissolute women—I’d make a large pyre of them and burn them. I would drench the earth with blood, manure it with the ashes of the corpses. There would be a rich crop. Satiated muzhiks would elect satiated officials. Man is an animal, and he needs rich pastures, fertile fields. The cities ought to be destroyed, and everything superficial, everything that hinders me and you from living simply as the sheep and roosters—to the devil with it all!”

  His viscid rank-smelling words fairly glued themselves to Yevsey’s heart. It was difficult and dangerous to listen to them.

  “Suddenly they will summon me and ask me what he said. Maybe he’s speaking on purpose to trap me. Then they’ll seize me.” He trembled and moved uneasily in his chair. “May I go?” he requested of Piotr quietly.

  “Where?”

  “To my room.”

  “Oh, yes, go on.”

  “Got frightened, the donkey!” remarked Sasha without lifting his head.

  “Go on, go on,” repeated Piotr.

  Klimkov undressed noiselessly without making a light. He groped for the bed in the dark, and rolled himself up closely in the cold, damp sheet. He wanted to see nothing, to hear nothing, he wanted to squeeze himself into a little unnoticeable lump. The snuffled words of Sasha clung in his memory. Yevsey thought he smelt his odor and saw the red band on the yellow forehead. As a matter of fact the irritated exclamations came in to him through the door.

  “I am a muzhik myself, I know what’s necessary.”

  Without wishing to do so Yevsey listened intently. He racked his brain to recall the person of whom this sick man so full of rancor reminded him, though he actually dreaded lest he should remember.

  It was dark and cold. Behind the black panes rocked the dull reflections of the light, disappearing and reappearing. A thin scraping sound was audible. The wind-swept rain knocked upon the panes in heavy drops.

  “Shall I enter a monastery?” Klimkov mused mournfully, and suddenly he remembered God, whose name he had seldom heard in his life in the city. He had not thought of Him the whole time. In his heart always full of fear and insult there had been no place for hope in the mercy of Heaven. But now it unexpectedly appeared, and suffused his breast with warmth, extinguishing his heavy, dull despair. He jumped from bed, kneeled on the floor, and firmly pressed his hands to his bosom. He turned his face to the dark corner of the room, closed his eyes, and waited without uttering words, listening to the beating of his heart. But he was exceedingly tired. The cold pricked his skin with thousands of sharp needles. He shivered, and lay down again in bed, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER XIV

  When Yevsey awoke he saw that in the corner to which he had directed his mute prayer there were no ikons, but two pictures on the wall, one representing a hunter with a green feather in his hat kissing a stout girl, the other a fair-haired woman with naked bosom, holding a flower in her hand.

  He sighed as he looked around his room without interest. When he had washed and dressed he seated himself at the window. The middle of the street upon which he looked, the pavements, and the houses were all dirty. The horses plodded along shaking their heads, damp drivers sat on the box-seats, also shaking as if they had come unscrewed. The people as always were hurrying somewhere. Today, when splashed with mud, they seemed less dangerous than usual.

  Yevsey was hungry. But he did not know whether he had the right to ask for tea and bread, and remained motionless as a stone until he heard a knock on the wall, upon which he went to the door of Piotr’s room.

  “Have you had tea yet?” asked the spy, who was still lying in bed.

  “No.”

  “Ask for it.”

  Piotr stuck his bare feet out of the bed, and looked at his fingers as he stretched them.

  “We’ll drink tea, and then you’ll go with me,” he said yawning. “I’ll show you a man, and you will follow him. You must go wherever he goes, you understand? Note the time he enters a house and how long he stays there. If he leaves the house, or meets another man on the way, notice the appearance of that man and then—well, you won’t understand everything at the very first.” Piotr looked at Klimkov, whistled quietly, and turning aside continued lazily, “Last night Sasha babbled about various things here—he upbraided everybody—don’t think of saying anything about it. Take care. He’s a sick man, and drinks, but he’s a power. You can’t hurt him, but he’ll eat you up alive. Remember that. Why, brother, he was a student once himself, and he knows their business down to a ‘t.’ He was even put in prison for political offence. And now he gets a hundred rubles a month, and not only Filip Filippovich but even the general calls on him for advice. Yes, indeed.” Piotr drew his flabby face, crumpled with sleep, in a frown, his grey eyes lowered with dissatisfaction. He dressed while he spoke in a bored, grumbling voice. “Our work is not a joke. If you catch people by their throats in a trice, then of course—but first you must tramp about a hundred versts for each one, and sometimes more. You must know where each man was at a given time, with whom he was, in fact, you have to know everything—everything.”

  The evening before, notwithstanding the agitations of the day; Klimkov had found Piotr an interesting, clever person. Now, however, seeing that he spoke with an effort, that he moved about reluctantly, and that everything dropped from his hands, Yevsey felt bolder in his presence.

  “Must we walk the streets the whole day long?” he plucked up the courage to ask.

  “Sometimes you have a night outing, too, in the cold, thirty degrees Centigrade. A very evil demon invented our profession.”

  “And when they all will have been caught?”

  “Who?”

  “The unfaithful ones, the enemies.”

  “Say revolutionists, or political offenders. You and I won’t catch everyone of them. They all seem to be born twins.”

  At tea Piotr opened his book. On looking into it, he suddenly grew animated. He jumped from his chair, quickly laid out the cards, and began to calculate—“One thousand two hundred and sixteenth deal. I have three of spades, seven of hearts, ace of diamonds.”

  Before leaving the house he put on a black overcoat and an imitation sheepskin cap, and stuck a portfolio in his hand, making himself look like an official.

  “Don’t walk alongside me on the street,” he said sternly, “and don’t speak to me. I will enter a certain house; you go into the dvornik’s lodging, tell him you have to wait for Timofeyev. I’ll soon—”

  Fearing he would lose Piotr in the crowd Yevsey walked behind him without removing his eyes from his figure. But all of a sudden Piotr disappeared. Klimkov was at a loss. He rushed forward, then stopped, and pressed himself against a lamp-post. Opposite him rose a large house with gratings over the dark windows of the first story. Through the narrow entrance he saw a bleak gloomy yard paved with large stones. Klimkov was afraid to enter. He looked all around him uneasily shifting from one foot to the other.

  A man with a reddish little beard now walked out with hasty steps. He wore a sort of sleeveless jacket and a cap with a visor pulled down on his forehead. He winked his grey eyes at Yevsey, and said in a low tone:

  “Come here. Why didn’t you go to the dvornik?”

  “I lost you,” Yevsey admitted.

  “Lost? Look out! You might get it in the neck for that. Listen. Three doors away from here is the Zemstvo Board building. A man will soon leave the place who works there. His name is Dmitry Ilyich Kurnosov. Remember. You are to follow him. You understand? Come, and I will show him to you.”

  Several minutes later Klimkov like a little dog was quickly following a man in a worn overcoat and a crumpled black hat. The man was large and strong. He walked rapidly, swung a cane, and rapped it on the asphalt vigorous
ly. Black hair with a sprinkling of grey fell from under his hat on his ears and the back of his neck.

  Yevsey was suddenly overcome by a feeling of pity, which was a rare thing with him. It imperiously demanded action. Perspiring from agitation he darted across the street in short steps, ran forward, recrossed the street, and met the man breast to breast. Before him flashed a dark-bearded face, with meeting brows, a smile reflected in blue eyes, and a broad forehead seamed with wrinkles. The man’s lips moved. He was evidently singing or speaking to himself.

  Klimkov stopped and wiped the perspiration from his face with his hands. Then he followed the man with bent head and eyes cast to the ground, raising them only now and then in order not to lose the object of his observation from sight.

  “Not young,” he thought. “A poor man apparently. It all comes from poverty and from fear, too.”

  He remembered the Smokestack, and trembled.

  “He’ll kill me,” he thought. Then he grew sorry for the Smokestack.

  The buildings looked down upon him with dim, tired eyes. The noise of the street crept into his ears insistently, the cold liquid mud squirted and splashed. Klimkov was overcome by a sense of gloomy monotony. He recalled Rayisa, and was drawn to move aside, away from the street.

  The man he was tracking stopped at the steps of a house, pushed the bell button, raised his hat, fanned his face with it, and flung it back on his head, leaving bare part of a bald skull. Yevsey stationed himself five steps away at the curb. He looked pityingly into the man’s face, and felt the need to tell him something. The man observed him, frowned, and turned away. Yevsey, disconcerted, dropped his head, and sat down on the curb.

  “If he only had insulted me,” he thought. “But this way, without any provocation, it’s not good, it’s not good.”

  “From the Department of Safety?” he heard a low hissing voice. The question was asked by a tall reddish muzhik with a dirty apron and a broom in his hands.

  “Yes,” responded Yevsey, and the very same instant thought, “I ought not to have told him.”

  “A new one again?” remarked the janitor. “You are all after Kurnosov?”

  “Yes.”

  “So? Tell the officers that this morning a guest came to him from the railroad station with trunks, three trunks. He hasn’t registered yet with the police. He has twenty-four hours’ time. A little sort of a pretty fellow with a small mustache. He wears clean clothes.” The dvornik ran the broom over the pavement several times, and sprinkled Yevsey’s shoes and trousers with mud. Presently he stopped to remark, “You can be seen here. They aren’t fools either, they notice your kind. You ought to stand at the gates.”

  Yevsey obediently stepped to the gates. Suddenly he noticed Yakov Zarubin on the other side of the street wearing a new overcoat and gloves and carrying a cane. The black derby hat was tilted on his head, and as he walked along the pavement he smiled and ogled like a street girl confident of her beauty.

  “Good morning,” he said, looking around. “I came to replace you. Go to Somov’s café on Lebed Street, ask for Nikolay Pavlov there.”

  “Are you in the Department of Safety, too?” asked Yevsey.

  “I got there ten days before you. Why?”

  Yevsey looked at him, at his beaming swart countenance.

  “Was it you who told about me?”

  “And didn’t you betray the Smokestack?”

  After thinking a while Yevsey answered glumly:

  “I did it after you had betrayed me. You were the only one I told.”

  “And you were the only one the Smokestack told. Ugh!” Yakov laughed, and gave Yevsey a poke on the shoulder. “Go quick, you crooked chicken!” He walked by Yevsey’s side swinging his cane. “This is a good position. I understand so much. You can live like a lord, walk about, and look at everything. You see this suit? Now the girls show me especial attention.”

  Soon he took leave of Yevsey, and turned back quickly. Klimkov following him with an inimical glance fell to thinking. He considered Yakov a dissolute, empty fellow, whom he placed lower than himself, and it was offensive to see him so well satisfied and so elegantly dressed.

  “He informed against me. If I told about the Smokestack it was out of fear. But why did he do it?” He made mental threats against Yakov. “Wait, we will see who’s the better man.”

  When he asked at the café for Nikolay Pavlov, he was shown a stairway, which he ascended. At the top he heard Piotr’s voice on the other side of a door.

  “There are fifty-two cards to a pack. In the city in my district there are thousands of people, and I know a few hundred of them maybe. I know who lives with whom, and what and where each of them works. People change, but cards remain one and the same.”

  Besides Sasha there was another man in the room with Piotr, a tall, well-built person, who stood at the window reading a paper, and did not move when Yevsey entered.

  “What a stupid mug!” were the words with which Sasha met Yevsey, fixing an evil look upon his face. “It must be made over. Do you hear, Maklakov?”

  The man reading the paper turned his head, and looked at Yevsey with large bright eyes.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Piotr, who seemed to be excited and had dishevelled hair, asked Yevsey what he had seen. The remnants of dinner stood on the table; the odor of grease and sauer-kraut titillated Yevsey’s nostrils, and gave him a keen appetite. He stood before Piotr, who was cleaning his teeth with a goose-quill, and in a dispassionate voice repeated the information the janitor had given him. At the first words of the account Maklakov put his hands and the paper behind his back, and inclined his head. He listened attentively twirling his mustache, which like the hair on his head was a peculiar light shade, a sort of silver with a tinge of yellow. The clean, serious face with the knit brows and the calm eyes, the confident pose of his powerful body clad in a close-fitting, well made, sober suit, the strong bass voice—all this distinguished Maklakov advantageously from Piotr and Sasha.

  “Did the janitor himself carry the trunks in?” he asked Yevsey.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “That means he did not carry them in. He would have told you whether they were heavy or light. They carried them in themselves. Evidently that’s the way it was.”

  “The printing office?” asked Sasha.

  “Literature, the current number.”

  “Well, we must have a search made,” said Sasha gruffly, and uttered an ugly oath, shaking his fist.

  “I must find the printing-press. Get me type, boys, and I’ll fix up a printing-press myself. I’ll find the donkeys. We’ll give them all that’s necessary. Then we’ll arrest them, and we’ll have lots of money.”

  “Not a bad scheme!” exclaimed Piotr.

  Maklakov looked at Yevsey, and asked:

  “Have you had your dinner yet?”

  “No.”

  “Take your dinner,” said Piotr with a nod toward the table. “Be quick about it.”

  “Why treat him to remnants?” asked Maklakov calmly. Then he stepped to the door, opened it, and called out, “Dinner, please.”

  “You try,” Sasha snuffled to Piotr, “to persuade that idiot Afanasov to give us the printing-press they seized last year.”

  “Very well, I’ll try,” Piotr assented meditatively.

  Maklakov did not look at them, but silently twisted his mustache. Dinner was served. A round pock-marked modest-looking man made his appearance in the room at the same time as the waiter. He smiled at everyone benevolently, and shook Yevsey’s hand vigorously.

  “My name is Solovyov,” he said to him. “Have you heard the news, friends? This evening there will be a banquet of the revolutionists at Chistov’s hall. Three of our fellows will go there as butlers, among others you, Piotr.”

  “I again?” shouted Piotr, and his face became covered with red blo
tches. His anger made him look older. “The third time in two months that I have had to play lackey! Excuse me! I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t address me on the subject,” said Solovyov affably.

  “What does it mean? Why do they choose just me to be a servant?”

  “You look like one,” said Sasha, with a smile.

  “There will be three,” Solovyov repeated sighing. “What do you say to having some beer? All right?”

  Piotr opened the door, and shouted in an irritated voice:

  “Half a dozen beer,” and he went to the window clenching his fists and cracking his knuckles.

  “There, you see, Maklakov?” said Sasha. “Among us no one wants to work seriously, with enthusiasm. But the revolutionists are pushing right on—banquets, meetings, a shower of literature, open propaganda in the factories!”

  Maklakov maintained silence, and did not look at Sasha. Round Solovyov then took up the word, smiling amiably.

  “I caught a girl today at the railroad station with books. I had already noticed her in a villa in the summer. ‘Well,’ thought I, ‘amuse yourself, my dear.’ Today, as I was walking in the station with no people to track, I was looking about, and there I see her marching along carrying a handbag. I went up to her, and respectfully proposed that she have a couple of words with me. I noticed she started and paled, and hid the bag behind her back. ‘Ah,’ thinks I, ‘my dear little stupid, you’ve gotten yourself into it.’ Well, I immediately took her to the police station, they opened her luggage, and there was the last issue of ‘Emancipation’ and a whole lot more of their noxious trash. I took the girl to the Department of Safety. What else was I to do? If you can’t get Krushin pike, you must eat blinkers. In the carriage she kept her little face turned away from me. I could see her cheeks burned and there were tears in her eyes. But she kept mum. I asked her, ‘Are you comfortable, madam?’ Not a word in reply.”