The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Even with the wise men of the Temple,” Larion said, “Christ conversed like a child, that is why in his simple wisdom He appeared greater than they. You, Motka, remember this, and try to conserve the child-like throughout your whole life, for in it lies truth.”

  I would ask him:

  “Will Christ come again soon?”

  “Yes, soon,” he would say, “soon, for it is said that people are again looking for Him.”

  As Larion’s words now come back to me, it seems to me that he saw God as the great Creator of the most beautiful things, and man as an incompetent being, who was lost on the by-ways of the world. And he pitied this talentless heir to the great riches left to him on this earth by God.

  Both he and Savelko had one faith. I remember that an ikon appeared miraculously in our village. Once, very early on an autumn morning a woman came to the well for water, when suddenly she saw something glow in the darkness at the bottom of the well. She called the people together. The village elder appeared, the priest came, and Larion ran up. They let a man down into the well and he brought up the ikon of the “unburnt bush.” They performed mass right on the spot and then they decided to put up a shrine above the well, the priest crying:

  “Orthodox, give your offerings.”

  The village elder lent his authority and gave three rubles himself. The peasants untied their purses and the women earnestly brought pieces of linen and grain of all sorts. There was rejoicing in the village and I, too, was happy, as on the day of Christ’s holy Resurrection.

  But even during mass I noticed that Larion’s face looked sad. He glanced at no one, and Savelko ran about like a mouse through the crowd and giggled. At night I went to look at the apparition. It stood above the well, giving forth an azure glow like a vapor, as if some one unseen was breathing on it tenderly, warming it with his light and heat; it gave me anguish and pleasure.

  When I came home I heard Larion say sadly,

  “There is no such Holy Virgin.”

  And Savelko drawled out the following, laughing:

  “I know, Moses lived long before Christ. Why! the scoundrels! A miracle, what? Oh, but you peasants are queer!”

  “For this the elder and the priest ought to go to jail,” Larion said in a very low voice. “Let them not kill the God in man just to slack their own greed.”

  I felt uneasy at this conversation and I asked from the stove:

  “What are you talking about, Uncle Larion?”

  They were silent, then they whispered to each other; evidently they were disturbed. Then Savelko cried:

  “What is the matter with you? You yourself complained that the people were fools, and now you are shamelessly making a fool of Matveika! Why?”

  He jumped over to me and said:

  “Look, Motka, here are matches. I rub them between my hands, see? Put out the light, Larion.”

  They put out the lamp, and I saw Savelko’s two hands glow in the darkness with the same blue phosphorescence as the miraculous ikon. It was terrible and offensive to see.

  Savelko said something, but I crouched in a corner of the stove, closed my ears with my fingers, and remained silent. Then they crawled in by my side, took vodka along, and for a long time they took turns in telling me about true miracles and of the faith of man sacrilegiously betrayed. And so I fell asleep while they talked.

  After two or three days, many priests and officials arrived, arrested the ikon, dismissed the village elder from his post, and the priest, too, was threatened with a law-suit. Then I believed the whole thing had been a fraud, though it was hard for me to admit that it was done for the purpose of getting linen from the women and some pennies from the men.

  When I was six years old, Larion began to teach me the abcs in the Church-tongue and when two winters later a school was opened in our village, he sent me there. At first I grew somewhat apart from Larion. I liked to study, and I took to my books zealously, so that when he asked me my lessons, as sometimes happened, he would say, after hearing me,

  “Fine, Motka.”

  Once he said:

  “Good blood boils in you. It’s plain your father was no fool.” And I asked,

  “But where is he?”

  “Who can know!”

  “Is he a peasant?”

  “All one can say for sure is that he was a man. His caste is unknown. However, he could hardly have been a peasant. By your face and skin, not to mention your character, he seems to have been from the gentry.”

  Those casual words of his sank deep into my mind and they didn’t do me much good. When they called me a foundling at school, I balked and shouted to my comrades:

  “You are peasant children, but my father is a gentleman!”

  I became very firm about this. One must protect oneself somehow against insults, and I had no other protection in my mind. They began to dislike me, to call me bad names, and I fought back. I was a strong youngster and could fight easily. Complaints grew about me, and people said to the sexton:

  “Quiet that bastard of yours!”

  And others without bothering to complain, pulled my ears to their hearts’ content.

  Then Larion said to me:

  “You may be a son of a general, Matvei, but that isn’t of such great importance. We are all born in the same way and therefore the honor is the same for all.”

  But it was too late. I was twelve years old at the time and felt insults keenly. Something pulled me away from people and again I found myself close to the sexton. All winter we wandered together in the wood, catching birds, and I became worse in my studies.

  I finished school at thirteen, and Larion began to think what he should do with me. I would go rowing with him in a boat, I at the oars and he steering, and he led me in his thoughts over all the paths of human fate, telling me of the various vocations in life.

  He saw me a priest, a soldier, an employee, and nowhere was it good for me.

  “What should it be then, Motka?” he would ask.

  Then he would look at me and say, laughing,

  “Never mind, don’t get frightened. If you don’t fall down, you will crawl out. Only avoid the military. That’s a man’s finish.”

  In August, soon after the Day of Assumption, we went together to the lake of Liubushin to catch sheat-fish. Larion was a bit drunk and he had wine along with him. From time to time he sipped from the bottle, cleared his throat and sang so that he could be heard over the whole water.

  His boat was bad, it was small and unsteady. He made a sharp turn, the bow dipped, and we both found ourselves in the water. It was not the first time that such a thing happened, and I was not frightened. I rose and saw Larion swimming at my side, shaking his head and saying to me:

  “Swim to the bank and I’ll push the damned tub there.”

  It was not far from the bank and the current was weak. I swam tranquilly, when suddenly I felt as if something pulled at my feet, or as if I had struck a cold current, and looking back, I saw that our boat was floating bottom up, and Larion was not there. He was nowhere.

  Like a stone striking my head, terror hit my heart. A cramp seized me and I sank to the bottom.

  An employee from the estate, Yegor Titoff, who was crossing the field, saw how we capsized. He saw Larion disappear and when I began to drown, Titoff was already on the bank undressing. He pulled me out, but Larion was not found until night.

  His dear soul was extinguished, and immediately it became both dark and cold for me. When they buried him, I was sick in bed, and I could not escort the dear man to the cemetery. When I was up, the first thing I did was to go to his grave. I sat there, and could not even weep, so great was my sorrow. His voice rang in my memory, his words lived again, but the man who used to lay his tender hand on my head was no longer on this earth. Everything became strange and distant. I sat with my eyes closed. Suddenly somebody
picked me up. He took me by the hand and picked me up. I looked and saw Titoff.

  “You have nothing to do here,” he said. “Come.” And he led me away. I went with him.

  He said to me:

  “It seems you have a good heart, youngster, it remembers the good.”

  But this did not make me feel any better. I was silent. Titoff continued:

  “Even at the time when you were abandoned, I thought to myself, I shall take the child to me, but I came too late. However, it seems it is God’s wish. Here He again puts your life into my hands. That means you will come to live with me.”

  It was all the same to me then, whether to live, not to live, how to live or with whom.... Thus I passed from one point in my life to another without realizing it myself.

  CHAPTER III

  After a time I began to take interest in all that surrounded me. Titoff was a silent man, tall in stature, with his head and cheeks shaved like a soldier’s, and he wore a long mustache. He spoke slowly and as if he were afraid to say one word too many, or as if he were in doubt himself of what he was saying. He held his hands in his pocket or crossed them behind his back, as if he were ashamed of them. I knew that the peasants of the village and even those of the neighboring district hated him. Two years before, in the village of Mabina, they beat him with a stake. They said that he always carried a revolver with him.

  His wife, Nastasia, was handsome, tall and slender. Her face was bloodless, with two feverish, large eyes. She was often sick. Her daughter, Olga, who was three years my junior, was also pale and thin.

  A great silence reigned about them. Their floor was covered with thick carpet, and not a footstep could be heard. Even the clock on the wall ticked inaudibly. The lamps, which were never extinguished, burned before their holy images. There were prints stuck on the walls, showing the Last Judgment and the Martyrdom of the Apostles and of Saint Barbara. In one corner, on the low stove, a large cat, the color of smoke, looked out of its green eyes on the surroundings and seemed to guard the silence.

  In the midst of this awful stillness it took me a long time to forget the songs of Larion and his birds.

  Titoff brought me to the office of the estate and showed me the books. Thus I lived. It seemed to me that Titoff watched me and followed me about in silence as if he expected something from me. I felt depressed and unhappy. I was never gay, but now I became almost morose. I had no one to speak to, and, moreover, I did not wish to speak to any one. When Titoff or his wife asked me about Larion I did not answer, but mumbled something. A feeling of unhappiness and sadness weighed upon me. Titoff displeased me by the suspicious stillness of his life.

  I went almost daily to the church to help the watchman, Vlassi, and also the new sexton, a handsome young man, who had been a school teacher. He was not interested in his work, but he was a great friend of the priest, whose hand he always kissed and whom he followed about like a dog. He continually reproved me, for which he was in the wrong, because I knew the holy service better than he did and always did everything according to rule.

  It was at this time, when life became difficult for me, that I began to love God. One day when I was placing the tapers in front of the image of the Holy Virgin and her Child, before mass, I saw that they looked at me with a grave and compassionate expression. I began to weep, and, falling on my knees, I prayed for I do not know what—for Larion, no doubt. I do not know how long I remained there, but I arose consoled, my heart warm and animated. Vlassi was at the altar and he mumbled something incomprehensible. I mounted the steps, and when I was near him he looked at me.

  “You look very happy,” he said. “Have you found a kopeck?”

  I knew why he asked that question, for I often found money on the ground. But now these words left an unpleasant impression on me, as if some one had hurt my heart.

  “I was praying to God,” I said.

  “To which one?” he asked me. “We have more than a hundred here. And the living One, the true One, who is not made of wood, where is He? Go and find Him.”

  I knew the value to attach to his words. Nevertheless, they appeared offensive to me at this time. Vlassi was a decrepit old man, who could hardly walk. His limbs stuck out at the knees and he always tottered as if he were walking on a rope. He had not a tooth in his mouth, and his dark face looked like an old rag, from which two wild eyes stuck out. He had lost his reason and had commenced to rave even some time before Larion’s death.

  “I don’t watch the church,” he said. “I watch cattle. I was born a shepherd and shall die a shepherd. Yes, soon I shall leave the church for the fields.”

  Every one knew that he had never watched cattle.

  “The church is a cemetery,” he would say. “It is a dead place. I wish to deal with something living. I must go and feed cattle. All my ancestors have been shepherds, and I also up to my forty-second year.”

  Larion used to make fun of him. One day he said to him laughingly:

  “In olden times there was a god of cattle who was called Voloss. Perhaps he was your great-greatgrandfather.”

  Vlassi questioned him about Voloss; then he said:

  “That’s right. I have known that I was a god for a long time, only I am afraid of the priest. Wait a little, sexton; don’t you tell it to him. When the right time comes I will tell him myself.”

  It was impossible to get the idea out of his head. I knew that he was crazy, yet he worried me.

  “Take care,” I said to him. “God will punish you.”

  And he muttered: “I am a god myself.”

  Suddenly my foot caught on the carpet and I fell, and I interpreted it as an omen. From that day I began to love passionately all that pertained to the church. The ardor of my childish heart was so great that everything became sacred for me—not only the images and the gospels, but even the chandeliers and the censer, whose very coals became precious in my eyes. I used to touch these objects with joy and with a feeling of great respect. When I went up the steps of the altar my heart would cease beating, and I could have kissed the flagstones. I felt that I was under One who saw everything, directed my steps and surrounded me with a supernatural force; who warmed my heart with a dazzling and blinding light, and I saw only myself. At times I remained alone in the darkness of the temple, but it was light in my heart; for my God was there, and there was no place for childish troubles, nor for the sufferings which surrounded me—that is to say, the human life about me. The nearer one comes to God, the farther one is from man. But, of course, I did not understand that at that time.

  I began to read all the religious works which fell into my hands. Thus my heart became filled with the divine word. My soul drank avidly of its exquisite sweetness, and a fountain of grateful tears opened within me. Often I went to the church before the other faithful ones, and, kneeling before the image of the Trinity, I wept lightly and humbly, without thinking and without praying. I had nothing to ask of God and I worshiped Him with complete self-forgetfulness. I remembered Larion’s words:

  “When you pray with your lips you pray to the air and not to God. God thinks of the thoughts, not the words, like man.”

  I did not even have thoughts. I knelt and sang in silence a joyful song, happy in the thought that I was not alone in the world and that God was near me and guarded me. That was a happy time for me, like a calm and joyful holiday. I liked to remain alone in the church, when the noise and the whisperings were over. Then I lost myself in the stillness and rose up to the clouds, and from that height man and all that pertained to man became more and more invisible to me.

  But Vlassi bothered me. He dragged his feet on the flagstones, he trembled like the shadows of a tree shaken by the wind, and he muttered with his toothless mouth:

  “I have nothing to do here. Is it my business? I am a god, the shepherd of all earthly cattle. To-morrow I am going away into the fields. Why have they exiled me here in the
se cold shadows? Is this my work?”

  He troubled me with his blasphemies, for I imagined that his profanity sullied the purity of the temple and that God was angry at his being in His house.

  People began to notice my piety and my religious zeal. When the priest met me he grunted and blessed me in a special way, and I had to kiss his hand, which was always cold and covered with sweat. Although I envied his being initiated into the divine mysteries, I did not love him and was even afraid of him.

  Titoff’s little, dull eyes, like buttons, followed me with increasing vigilance. Every one treated me carefully, as if I were made of glass. More than once little Olga would ask me, in a low voice:

  “Will you be a saint?”

  She was timid even when I was kind, when I told her religious stories. On winter nights I read aloud the Prologue and the Minea. Gusts of snow blew over the country, groaning and beating against the walls. In the room silence reigned and no one stirred. Titoff sat with head bowed, so that his face could not be seen. Nastasia, who was sleepy, sat with her eyes fixed on me. When the frost crackled she trembled and glanced about her, smiling gently. When she did not understand the meaning of a Slavic word she would ask me. Her sweet voice resounded for an instant, and then again there was quiet. Only the flying snow sang plaintively, wandering over the fields seeking repose.

  The holy martyrs, who fought for the Lord and celebrated His greatness by their life and by their death, were especially dear to my soul. I was touched also by the merciful and pious men who sacrificed everything for love of their neighbors. But I did not understand those who left the world in the name of God and went away to live in a desert or in a cave. I felt that the devil was too powerful for the Anchorites and the Stylites, that he made them flee before him. Larion had denied the devil. Nevertheless, the life of the saints forced me to recognize him. And, besides, the fall of man would be incomprehensible if one did not admit the existence of the devil. Larion saw in God the one and omnipotent Creator, but then from where came evil? According to the life of the saints, the author of all evil is the devil. In this rôle I accepted him. God, then, was the creator of cherries, and the devil the creator of burrs; God the creator of nightingales and the devil the creator of owls. However, although I accepted the devil, I did not believe in him and was not afraid of him. He was useful to me in explaining the existence of evil; but at the same time he bothered me, for he lessened the majesty of God.