by Maxim Gorky
I had a coward’s entry into Russia. There were rumors of riots and disorders, for it was in the year of general strikes and barricades, and as the train moved farther into the interior, the guards who shoveled the snow off the track seemed to me soldiers under arms, standing there to protect us from some infuriated mob. My heart beat with fear at that great and uncouth stranger to me, the Russian people. But as my stay in Russia was prolonged, my kinship with the people grew. The common man appeared to me as a gentle protector and friend. The drivers of the droshkies, the peasants, the workingmen, the conductors on the trains, all became kindly elder brothers, who set one on one’s right path or made a friendly remark as one passed along. Every one talked to every one, and although the great interest of the time was the Duma and the political situation, there lurked always a personal understanding and a personal relation behind each discussion. All classes had this attitude, and though the educated had more facts at their resources, for they knew history and the outside world, they had the same outlook and the same manner as the others. I became so much at one with the people around me, that when I left Russia eighteen months later, I felt this time fearful at going away, as if now truly I were going from home into a strange land. As the train came into the Western world, as I found myself in Poland and out again into Austria, I was again alone, a solitary and detached individual who was to stand on guard against the ill-turn which would be given me if I were not watchful. Outside of Russia, the people, “the God-creators,” as Gorky calls them, fell apart into millions of various atoms, each struggling for his own life. It was in Russia that I left them still unspoiled, unadventitious, united in a great simplicity of faith and love. It is therefore that the last chapter of this book is distinct and real to me, and I can almost see with my own eyes that vast, surging procession of the people, showing their loving strength and giving of their strength to the weak.
To-day, when all ideals and hopes have gone smash in the hurly-burly of this World War, Gorky has taken his side with his country and is again living in Russia. In the interim, before he can pick up the gauntlet to fight on for a new and better order, he has gone back to his former theme, writing as before of the tramps and “ex-men” and gipsies he knew in his youth, and Russia is pleased with him once more.
ROSE STRUNSKY.
New York, February, 1916.
CHAPTER I
Let me tell you my life; it won’t take much of your time—you ought to know it.
I am a weed, a foundling, an illegitimate being. It isn’t known to whom I was born, but I was abandoned on the estate of Mr. Loseff in the village of Sokal, in the district of Krasnoglinsk. My mother left me—or perhaps it was some one else—in the landlord’s park, on the steps of the little shrine under which the old landlady Loseff lay buried and where I was found by Danil Vialoff, the gardener. He was walking in the park early in the morning, when he saw a child wrapped in rags lie moving on the steps, of the shrine. A smoke-colored cat was walking stealthfully around it.
I lived with Danil until I was four years old, but as he himself had a large family, I fed myself wherever I happened to be, and when I found nothing I whined and whined, then fell asleep hungry.
When I was four I was taken by the sexton Larion, a very strange and lonely man; he took me because of his loneliness. He was short of stature, round like a toy balloon and had a round face. His hair was red, his voice thin like a woman’s, and his heart was also like a woman’s, gentle to everybody. He liked to drink wine and drank much of it; when sober he was silent, his eyes always half-closed, and he had an air of being guilty before all, but when drunk, he sang psalms and hymns in a loud voice, held his head high and smiled at every one.
He remained apart from people, living in poverty, for he had given away his share to the priest, while he himself fished both summer and winter. And for fun he caught singing birds, teaching me to do the same. He loved birds and they were not afraid of him; it is touching to recall how even the most timid of little birds would run over his red head and get mixed up in his fiery hair. Or the bird would settle on his shoulder and look into his mouth, bending its wise little head to the side. Then again Larion would lie on a bench and sprinkle hempseed in his head and beard, and canaries, goldfinches, tomtits and bullfinches would collect around him, hunting through his hair, creeping over his cheeks, picking his ears, settling on his nose while he lay there roaring with laughter, squinting his eyes and conversing tenderly with them. I envied him for this—of me, the birds were afraid.
Larion was a man of tender soul and all animals recognized it; I can’t say the same for men, though I don’t mean to blame them for I know man isn’t fed by caresses.
It used to be rather difficult for him in winter; he had no wood and he had nothing to buy it with, having drunk up the money. His little hut was as cold as a cellar, except that the birds chirped and sang, and the two of us would lie on the cold stove, wrapped in everything possible, listening to the singing of the birds. Larion would whistle to them—he could whistle well—looking like a grossbeak, with his large nose, his hooked bill and his red head. Often he would say to me: “Well, listen, Motka” (I was baptized Matvei). “Listen!”
He would lie on his back, his hands under his head, squinting his eyes and singing something from the funeral Liturgy in his thin voice. The birds would then become quiet, stopping to listen, then they themselves would begin to sing one after the other. Larion would try to sing louder than they and they would exert themselves, especially the canaries and goldfinches, or the thrushes and starlings. He would often sing himself up to such a point that the tears from his eyes would trickle from out his lids, wetting his cheeks and washing his face gray.
This singing sometimes frightened me, and once I said to him in a whisper:
“Uncle, why do you always sing about death?” He stopped, looked at me and said, smiling,
“Don’t get frightened, silly. It doesn’t matter if it is about death; it is pretty. Of the whole church service the funeral mass is the most beautiful. It offers tenderness to man and pity for him. Among us, no one has pity except for the dead.” These words I remember very well, as I do all his words, but of course at that time I could not understand them. The things of childhood are only understood on the eve of old age, for these are the wisest years of man.
I remember also that I asked him once, “Why does God help man so little?”
“It’s none of His business,” he explained to me. “Help yourself, that’s why reason was given to you. God is here so that it won’t be so terrible to die, but just how to live, that is your affair.”
I soon forgot these words of his, and recalled them too late, and that is why I have suffered much vain sorrow.
He was a remarkable man! When angling most people never shout and never speak so as not to frighten the fish, but Larion sang unceasingly, or recounted the lives of the saints to me, or spoke to me about God, and yet the fish always flocked to him. Birds must also be caught with care, but he whistled all the time, teased them and talked to them and it never mattered—the birds walked into his traps and nets. The same thing as to bees; when setting a hive or doing anything else, which old bee-keepers do with prayers, and even then don’t always succeed, the sexton, when called for the job, would strike the bees, crush them, swear profanely, and yet everything went in the best way possible. He didn’t like bees—they blinded a daughter of his once. She found herself in a bee-hive—she was only three at the time—and a bee stung her eye. This eye grew diseased, and then blind, and soon the other eye followed. Later the little girl died from headache, and her mother became insane.
Yes, he never did anything the way other people did, and he was as tender to me as if he were my own mother. They did not treat me with much mercy in the village. Life was hard, and I was a stranger, and a superfluous one.... Suddenly and illegally to be eating the morsel that belonged to some one else!
Lari
on taught me the church service, and I became his helper and sang with him in the choir, lit the censer, and did all that was needed. I helped the watchman Vlassi keep order in the church and I liked doing all this, especially in winter. The church was of brick, they heated it well, and it was warm inside it.
I liked vespers better than morning mass. In the evening the people were purified by work and were freed of their worries, and they stood quietly and majestically, and their souls shone like wax candles with little flames. It was plain then, that though people had different faces their misery was the same.
Larion liked the church service; he would close his eyes, throw back his red head, stick out his Adam’s apple and burst forth into song, losing himself so that he would even start off on some uncalled for hymn and the priest would make signs to him from the altar: “Where is it taking you?” He also read beautifully. His voice was singsong and sonorous, and had tenderness in it, and emotion and joy. The priest did not like him, nor did he like the priest. More than once he said to me:
“That, a priest! He is no priest, he is a drum upon whom need and force of habit beat their sticks. If I were a priest, I would read the service in such a way that not only would I make the people cry, but even the holy images!”
It was true—the priest did not suit his post. He was short-nosed and dark as if he had been singed by gun-powder. His mouth was large and toothless, his beard straggly, his hair thin and bald on top, his arms long. He had a hoarse voice and he panted as if carrying a load that was too much for his strength. He was greedy and always in a bad humor—for his family was large and the village was poor, the land of the peasants bad and there was no business.
In summer, even when the mosquitoes were thick, Larion and I spent our days and our nights in the woods to hunt for birds or on the river to catch fish. It happened that he would be needed unexpectedly for some religious ceremony and he would not be there, nor would any one know where to find him. All the little boys in the village would scatter to hunt for him, running like hares and crying, “Sexton! Larion! Come home!” He would hardly ever be found. The priest would scold and threaten to complain, and the peasants would laugh.
CHAPTER II
Larion had a friend, Savelko Migun, a notorious thief, and a habitual drunkard. He was beaten more than once for his thieving and even sat in jail for it, but for all that he was a remarkable person. He sang songs and told stories in such a way that it is impossible to remember them without wonder.
I heard him many times, and now he stands before me as if alive; he was dry, lively, had a sparse beard, was all in tatters; with a small phiz and a wedge-shaped, large forehead underneath which often twinkled his thievish, merry eyes like two dark stars.
Often he would bring a bottle of vodka, or Larion would insist on buying one, and they would sit opposite each other at the table, Savelko saying:
“Well, sexton, roll out the litany.”
Then they drank ... Larion, a bit abashed, would nevertheless begin to sing, and Savelko sat as if glued to the spot, trembling, his little beard twitching, his eyes full of tears, smoothing his forehead with his hand and smiling or wiping the tears from his cheek with his fingers.
Then he would bounce up like a ball, crying:
“Most superb, Laria! Well, I envy the Lord God—beautiful songs are made for Him! But for man, Laria? What’s man anyway, no matter how good he be or how rich his soul? It isn’t hard for him to go before the Lord. But He, what does He do? Thou givest me nothing, Lord, and I give Thee my whole soul!”
“Don’t blaspheme!” Larion would say.
“I blaspheme?” Savelko would cry; “I never even thought of such a thing! How am I blaspheming? In no way at all! I am rejoicing for the Lord, that’s all. And now I am going to sing you something.”
He would stand up, stretch out his arm, and begin to chant. He sang quietly and mysteriously, opening his eyes wide and moving his dry finger continually on his outstretched arm, as if it were hunting for something in space. Larion would lean up against the wall, rest his hands on the bench, and look on in open-mouthed wonder. I lay on the stove with my heart melting within me with sweet sadness. Savelko would grow black before me, only his little white teeth would glisten and his dry tongue would move like a serpent’s while the sweat would rise on his forehead in thick drops. His voice seemed endless, and it flowed out and shone like a stream in a meadow. He would finish, stagger a bit, wipe his face with the back of his hand, then both would take a drink and remain silent a long time. Later Savelko would ask—
“And now Laria, ‘The Ocean Waves.’”
And in this way they cheered each other up all evening as long as they were not yet drunk. When that happened, Migun began to tell obscene stories about priests, landlords, and kings, and my sexton would laugh and I with them. Savelko without tiring produced one story after another, and each one so funny that he almost choked with laughter.
But best of all he sang on holidays in the wineshop. He stood up in front of the people, frowning hard so that the wrinkles lay deep on his temples. To look at him, one would think the songs came to his bosom from the earth itself and that the earth showed him the words and gave strength to his voice. Around him stood or sat the peasants, some with heads bowed chewing a piece of straw, others staring into Savelko’s mouth, and all were radiant, while the women even wept as they listened.
When he finished they said:
“Give us another, brother.”
And they brought him drinks.
The following story was told about Migun. He stole something in the village, and the peasants caught him. When they caught him, they said:
“Well, that finishes you! Now we are going to hang you, we can’t stand you any longer.”
And he, the story goes, answered:
“Drop it, peasants, that’s a nasty job you’ve begun. You have already taken from me the things I’ve stolen, so that you have lost nothing. Anyway, you can always get new things, but where will you get such a fellow as I? Who will cheer you up when I’m gone?”
“All right,” they said, “talk on.”
They took him to the wood to hang him and he began to sing on the way. When they first started out, they walked fast, then they slowed up. When they came to the wood, though the rope was ready, they waited, until he should finish his last song. Then they said to one another:
“Let him sing another song. It will do for his Last Communion.”
He sang another and then another, and then the sun rose. The men looked about them; a clear day was rising from the east. Migun stood smiling among them awaiting his death without fear. The peasants became abashed.
“Well, fellows, let him go to the devil,” they said. “If we hang him, we might have all kinds of sins and troubles on our heads for it.”
And they decided not to touch Migun.
“We bow to the ground before you for your talent,” they said, “but for your thieving we ought to beat you up, all the same.”
They gave him a light beating, and then they all went back in a body with him.
All this might have been made up, but it speaks well for human beings, and puts Savelko in a good light. And then think of this: if people can make up such good stories, it follows they are not so bad, and in this lies the whole point.
Not only did they sing songs together, but Savelko and Larion carried on long conversations with each other—often about the devil. They did not give him much honor.
Once I remember the sexton saying:
“The devil is the image of your own wickedness, the reflection of your own dark soul.”
“That means, he is my own foolishness?” Savelko asked.
“Just that and nothing else.”
“It must be so,” Migun said, laughing. “For were he alive, he would have snatched me up long ago!”
Larion didn’t believe in de
vils at all. I remember him discussing in the barn with the Dissenters and he shouting:
“It is not devilish, but brutish! Good and evil are in man. When you want goodness, goodness is there; if you want evil, evil is there, from you and for you. God does not force you by His Will either to good or evil. He created you free-willed, and you are free to do both good and evil. Your devil is misery and darkness! Good is really something human, because it springs from God, while your evil doesn’t come from the devil, but from the brute in you.”
They shouted at him:
“Red-haired heretic!”
But he kept on.
“That’s why,” he said, “the devil is painted with horns and feet like a goat’s, because he is the brute element in man.”
Best of all Larion spoke about Christ. I always wept when I pictured the bitter fate that befell the Holy Son of God. His whole life stood before me, from the discussion in the Temple with the wise men, to Golgotha, and He was like a pure and beautiful child in His ineffable love for the people, with a kind smile for all and a tender word of consolation—always like a child, dazzling in His beauty.
