The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “They let them go,” he thought in dismal annoyance. “They didn’t say anything, and let them go. And how about me? It isn’t a matter of indifference to me where they are. Of course not!”

  It was already dark. A solitary lamp was burning in front of the gates of the police station. Just as Yevsey approached it, he heard someone say in a muffled voice:

  “Here, this way, then to the back courtyard.”

  Yevsey stopped, and peered in alarm into the darkness. The gates were closed, but a dark man stood at the wicket set in one of the heavy swinging doors, apparently awaiting him.

  “Hurry!” The man commanded in a dissatisfied tone.

  Klimkov stopped, crept through the wicket, and went along the dark vaulted corridor under the building to a light feebly flickering, in the depths of the court, where he heard the scraping of feet on the stone, subdued voices, and the familiar repulsive snuffling. Klimkov stopped, listened, turned quietly, and walked back to the gate, raising his shoulders, so as to conceal his face in the collar of his overcoat. He had already reached the wicket, and was about to push it, when it opened of itself, and a man darted through, stumbling and clutching at Yevsey.

  “The devil! Who’s that?”

  “I.”

  “Who?”

  “Yevsey Klimkov.”

  “Aha! Well, show me the way. Why are you standing there? Don’t you recognize me?”

  Yevsey looked at the hooked nose, the curls behind the ears, the protruding narrow forehead.

  “I do. Viakhirev,” he said with a sigh.

  “Yes. Come on.”

  Klimkov returned in silence to the courtyard, where his eyes now distinguished many obscure figures looming in the darkness in uneven hillocks, slowly shifting from place to place, like large black fish in dark, cold water. The satiated voice of Solovyov resounded sweetishly:

  “That doesn’t suit me. But catch a girl for me, a little girl, a dainty little girl. I’ll knout her for you.”

  “Always joking, the old devil,” mumbled Viakhirev. “A fitting time for it.”

  “I can’t give beatings, but I like to give lashings. I remember how I used to flog my nephew, gee!”

  From a corner flowed the voice of Sasha, falling incessantly like water dripping from roofs on a rainy day, monotonous as the sound of chants recited in church.

  “Every time you meet those fellows with red flags beat them. First beat the men carrying the flags, the rest will take to flight.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “You will have revolvers. So that if you see people known to you by their participation in secret societies—those people upon whom you spied in your time—who were released from the prisons today by the insubordination of the unbridled mob—kill them outright!”

  “That’s reasonable,” said somebody, whose voice resembled Pantaleyev’s. “Either we, or they.”

  “Of course. How else?”

  “The people have gotten their liberty, but what are we to do?” replied Viakhirev sharply.

  Yevsey walked into a corner, where he leaned against a pile of wood, and looked and listened in perplexity.

  “A body, a little body, a tiny, wee little calf, meat!” the senseless words of Solovyov spread out like a thick, oily spot.

  Dark, heavy walls of unequal height surrounded the court sternly. Overhead slowly floated the clouds. On the walls gleamed the square windows, scattered and dim. Klimkov saw a low porch in one corner of the court, upon which Sasha was standing, his overcoat buttoned to the top, his collar raised, and a low cap thrust on the back of his head. Above him swung a small lamp, whose feeble flame trembled and smoked, as if endeavoring to consume itself as quickly as possible. Behind Sasha’s back was the black stain of the door. A few dark people sat on the steps of the porch at his feet. One, a tall grey person, stood in the doorway.

  “You must understand that you are given the liberty to make war upon the revolutionists,” said Sasha, putting his hands behind his back.

  The air hummed with the scraping of soles on the flagging, with dry metallic raps, and, at times, with subdued voices uttering exclamations and officious advice.

  “Look out! Be more careful!”

  “We’re not allowed to load the revolvers.”

  The vaguely outlined figures in the dark strangely resembled one another—quiet black people scattered over the yard. They stood in compact groups, and listened to the viscid voice of Sasha, rocking and swinging on their feet, as if swayed by powerful puffs of wind. Sasha’s talk drowned all sounds, filling Klimkov’s breast with a dreary cold and acute hatred of the spy.

  “You are given the right to proceed against the rebels in an open fight. Upon you lies the duty to defend the deceived Czar with all possible means. And know that generous rewards await you. Who has not yet received a revolver? Come up here.”

  Several muffled voices called out:

  “I—me—I.”

  Some persons moved to the porch. Sasha stepped aside, and the grey man squatted down on his heels.

  “Mayn’t I have two?” asked a lugubrious voice.

  “What for?”

  “For a comrade.”

  “Go ‘long!”

  The voices of the spies whom Yevsey knew sounded louder, braver, and jollier than before.

  “I’m not going to do any beating.”

  “We’ve heard that,” the hoarse voice of Pantaleyev sounded rudely.

  “Silence!”

  Someone smacking his lips greedily, complained:

  “I haven’t enough cartridge. We ought to get a whole boxful.”

  “I set things going in two station-houses today,” said Sasha. “I’m tired.”

  “It’ll be interesting tomorrow.”

  “Well, yes.”

  The words and the sounds flashed up before Yevsey’s mind like large sparks illuminating the morrow. They slowly dried up and consumed the hope of a placid life soon to come. He felt with his whole being that out of the darkness surrounding him, from these people about him, advanced a power inimical to his dreams and aims. This power would seize him again, would put him on the old road, would bring him back to the old terror. Hatred of Sasha seethed in his heart, the live, tenacious, yet pliant hatred of the weak, the implacable, sharp, revengeful feeling of a slave who has once been tortured by hope for liberty. He stood there thinking of nothing, in the quick realization that his hopes must inevitably die. He looked at Sasha half closing his eyes, and strained his ears to catch the spy’s every word.

  The men hurriedly departed from the yard in twos and threes, disappearing under the broad archway that yawned in the wall. The light over the head of the spy trembled, turned blue, and went out. Sasha seemed to jump from the porch into a pit, from which he snuffled angrily:

  “Today seven men of my division of the Safety Department did not show up. Why? Many seem to think it’s a holiday. I won’t tolerate stupidity. Nor laziness either. I want you to know it. I am now going to introduce strict regulations. I am not Filip Filippovich. Who said that Melnikov is going about with a red flag? Who?”

  “I saw him.”

  “With a flag?”

  “Yes. Marching and bawling ‘Liberty!’”

  “Is it you talking, Viakhirev?”

  “Yes, I.”

  Now that the tall body of Sasha had disappeared and mingled with the dark mass of people at the platform, it seemed to Yevsey that he grew in size and spread over the court like a stifling cloud, which imperceptibly floated toward him in the darkness. Yevsey came out of his leaning posture, and walked toward the exit, stepping as on ice, as if fearing he would sink through a hole. But the adhesive voice of Sasha overtook him, pouring a painful cold on the back of his neck.

  “Well, that fool will be the first to slash. I know him.” Sasha laughed a thin howling la
ugh. “I have a slogan for him, ‘Strike in behalf of the people.’ And who said that Maklakov dropped the service?”

  “He knows everything, the vile skunk,” Yevsey said to himself with a calm that surprised him.

  “I said it. I heard it from Viekov, and he got it from Klimkov.”

  “Viekov, Klimkov, Grokhotov—all trash. I’ll step on the tails of all of them. Parasites, hybrids, lazy good-for-nothings. Is anyone of them here?”

  “Klimkov must be here,” answered Viakhirev.

  Sasha shouted:

  “Klimkov!”

  Yevsey extended his arm before him, and walked faster. His legs bent under him. He heard Krasavin say:

  “Gone, apparently. You ought not to shout family names.”

  “I beg you not to teach me. I’ll soon destroy all family names and similar stupidities.”

  “It’s you that I’m going to destroy,” Yevsey made the mental threat, gnashing his teeth until they pained him.

  But when he had left the gate behind him, he was seized by the debilitating consciousness of his impotence and nothingness. It was a long time since he had experienced these feelings with such crushing distinctness. He was frightened by their load, and succumbed to their pressure.

  “Maybe it will still be warded off,” he tried to embolden himself. “Maybe he won’t succeed.”

  But Yevsey did not believe his own thoughts. Without a will of his own he regarded everybody else as equally devoid of will, and he knew that Sasha could easily compel all whom he wanted to compel to submit to his domination.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  The next day Yevsey resolved not to leave the house for a long time. He lay in bed looking at the ceiling. The leaden face of Sasha with the dim eyes and the band of red pimples on the forehead floated before him. Today this face recalled his childhood and the sinister disk of the moon in the mist over the marsh.

  As he lay there, empty, languid, and cold, he gave himself over to grief at his shattered dreams, the dreams that Sasha so easily crushed. His hatred of the spy deepening, he felt himself capable of biting him with his teeth, of gouging out his eyes.

  It occurred to him that some of his comrades might come to fetch him, and he hurriedly left the house, and ran down several streets. Tiring almost immediately he stopped and waited for a car. People passed by in a continuous stream. He scented something new in them today, and did violence to himself in examining them closely. Soon he realized that this new thing was the old fear so well known to him. It was the old dread and perplexity. People looked around distrustfully, suspiciously, no longer with the kind expression their eyes had recently worn. Their voices sounded lower, and betrayed anger, resentment, sorrow. Their talk was of the horrible.

  Two persons stationed themselves near Yevsey. One of them, a stout shaven man, asked of the other, who had a large black beard:

  “How many were killed?”

  “Five. Sixteen wounded.”

  “Did the Cossacks shoot?”

  “Yes. A boy was killed, a student at the high school.” Yevsey looked at them, and inquired drily:

  “What for?”

  The man with the black beard shrugged his shoulders, and answered reluctantly in a low voice:

  “They say the Cossacks were drunk.”

  “Sasha arranged that,” thought Yevsey.

  “And on the Spassky Bridge the mob beat a student, and threw him into the river,” announced the shaven man, drawing a deep breath.

  “What for?” Yevsey asked again.

  “I don’t know. Some sort of patriots.”

  The black-bearded man explained:

  “Since this morning tramps waving tri-colored flags and carrying portraits of the Czar have been marching the streets and beating the decently clad people.”

  “Sasha!” Yevsey repeated to himself.

  “They say it was organized by the police and the Department of Safety.”

  “Of course!” burst from Klimkov. But the next instant he compressed his lips tightly, and glanced sidewise at the black-bearded man. He resolved to go away. But just then the car came along, and as the two men prepared to board it, he thought:

  “I must get on, too, or else they’ll guess I’m a spy. What would they think of a man who waited for a car with them, and then didn’t take it?”

  The passengers in the car seemed calmer to Yevsey than the pedestrians on the street.

  “After all it’s some sort of concealment, though only behind glass,” was his explanation of the difference, as he listened to the animated conversation in the car.

  A tall man with a bony face said plaintively, spreading his hands:

  “I, too, love and respect the Czar; I’m heartily thankful to him for the manifesto. I’m ready to shout ‘Hurrah’ as much as you please; and offer up prayers of gratitude. But to smash windows from patriotism and break bones—what’s that?”

  “Such barbarism, beastliness in our age!” said a stout lady. “Oh, those people, how horribly cruel they are!”

  From a corner came a firm assured voice:

  “All the work of the police, no doubt of it!”

  “But what for?”

  All were silent for a minute.

  “I know,” thought Klimkov.

  From the corner came the same assured voice:

  “They’re preparing a counter-revolution in Russian fashion. You just take a close look at those in command of the patriotic demonstrators—disguised police, agents of the Department of Safety.”

  Yevsey heard these words with joy, and furtively regarded the young face. It was dry and clean, with a cartilaginous nose, a small mustache, and a tuft of light hair on a determined chin. The youth sat leaning against the back of his seat in a corner of the car, one leg crossed over the other. He looked at the passengers in the car with a wise glance from his blue eyes, and spoke like a man who masters his words and thoughts and believes in their effectiveness.

  Dressed in a short warm jacket and tall boots, he resembled a workingman, but his white hands and the thin horizontal lines on his forehead betrayed him.

  “Disguised,” thought Yevsey. “Well, let him be disguised. What difference does it make to me?”

  He began to follow the loud firm talk of the fair-haired youth with the greatest attention, looking at his wise, transparent blue eyes and agreeing with him. But suddenly he shuddered, seized with a sharp premonition. On the platform of the car, at the conductor’s side, he saw through the window a pair of narrow drooping shoulders, and the back of a black protruding head. The car jolted, and the familiar figure swayed.

  “Yakov Zarubin!”

  Klimkov utterly dismayed turned his look again upon the blue-eyed youth. He had removed his hat, and he smoothed his wavy hair as he said:

  “As long as our administration has the soldiers in its hands, the police, and the spies, it will not yield the people and society their rights without a fight, without bloodshed. We must remember that.”

  “It isn’t true, my dear sir,” cried the bony-faced man. “The Czar granted a full constitution. He granted it, yes, so how dare you—?”

  “But who is arranging the street massacres? And who’s shouting ‘Down with the constitution?’” the young man asked coldly. “You had better take a look at the defenders of the old system. There they go!”

  At that instant the car came to a standstill with a creak, and when the irritating noise of its movement had subsided, the passengers could hear loud turbulent shouts:

  “God save the Czar!”

  “Rrrra-a-h!”

  A pack of boys came running from around the corner in front of the car, and noisily scattered over the street, as if dropped from above. A crowd of people waving three-colored flags over their heads pushed after them like a black wedge in hurried disorder. Alarming shouts filled the air:
r />   “Hurrah!”

  “Stop, boys!”

  “Down with the constitution!”

  “We don’t want—”

  “God save the Czar!”

  “Hurrah!”

  The people shoved past one another, gesticulated wildly, and threw their hats in the air. In front of all with his head hanging low like a bull, walked Melnikov, holding a heavy pole from which the national flag floated. His eyes were fastened on the ground. He lifted his feet high, and apparently must have tramped the ground with great force, for at each step his body quivered, and his head shook. His heavy bellow could be heard above the chaos of thinner shouts.

  “We don’t want deception—”

  Behind, a crowd of ragged people, dark and grey, pushed down the street, jumping and twisting their necks. They raised their heads, hands, and arms, looked up to the windows of the houses, jumped on the pavements to knock off the hats of passersby, ran up to Melnikov again, shouted and whistled and seized one another, rolling into a heap. Melnikov waving the flag clanged like a huge bell:

  “Down with the mutinee-e! Down with the impostors! Stop!”

  “Drunk, or what?” thought Klimkov, coldly.

  “Halt!” Raising his head and the flag on high, the spy commanded: “Sing!”

  From his broad mouth gushed a savage mournful note:

  “Go-o-od—”

  But at that moment excited shouts splashed in the air, disordered and rapacious, like a flock of hungry birds. They clawed the voice of the spy, and covered it with their hasty, greedy mass.

  “Hurrah for the Emperor! Hats off! True Orthodox people—we want the old! Down with treachery!”

  It was quiet in the car. All stood with their hats off, silent, pale, observing the crowd that encircled them like a wavy, dirty ring. But the disguised man did not remove his hat. Yevsey looked at his stern face, and thought:

  “Putting on airs.” And he turned his eyes on the street with a wry smile on his face. He felt very distinctly the nothingness of these restless jumping people. He clearly understood that dark terror was whipping them from within, was pushing and carrying them from side to side. They were fighting, intoxicating themselves with loud shouts, in the desire to prove to themselves that they were afraid of nothing. They ran around the car like a pack of hounds just released from the leash, full of senseless joy, without having had time to free themselves from the customary fear. Apparently they could not make up their minds to traverse the broad bright street. They were unable to gather themselves into one body. They tossed about, roared, and glared around alarmingly, waiting for something.