The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  I could have beaten him well, but out of consideration for Olga I restrained myself.

  In the village it was known that I did not get on well with my father-in-law, and the people began to look at me in a friendlier way. As for myself, happiness had made me more gentle, and Olga, too, was mild and good of heart.

  In order to save the peasants from loss I began to give in to them here and there; helped one and spoke up for another. The village is like a glass house, where every one can look in, and so pretty soon Titoff said to me:

  “You again wish to bribe God.”

  I decided to drop my work in the office and said to my wife:

  “I earn six rubles a month, and with my birds I can make more.”

  But the poor child became sad. “Do whatever you want,” she answered, “only let us not become beggars. I am sorry for my father,” she added. “He wanted to do the best by us, and has taken many sins upon his soul for our sakes.”

  “Ah, my dear one,” I thought, “his well-wishing weighs heavily enough on me.”

  Some days later I told my father-in-law that I was going to leave the office.

  “To become a soldier?” he asked, smiling ironically.

  I was hurt to the quick. I felt that he was ready to do anything against me, and it would not be difficult for him to harm me, considering who his acquaintances were. If I became a soldier I would be lost. Even for the love he bore his daughter he would not save me.

  My hands became more and more tied. My wife wept in secret and went about with red eyes.

  “What is the matter, Olga?” I asked her.

  And she answered: “I do not feel well.”

  I remembered the oath I had made to her, and I became ashamed and embarrassed. One step and my problem would be settled, but I pitied the beloved woman. Had I not had Olga on my hands I would have even become a soldier to get out of Titoff’s clutches.

  Toward the end of June a son was born to us, and again for some time I was as if dazed. The travail was difficult, Olga screamed, and my heart almost burst with fear. Titoff looked into the room gloomily, though most of the time he stood in the court and trembled. He leaned against the staircase, wrung his hands, let his head hang and muttered to himself:

  “She will die. My whole life was useless. O Lord, have mercy! When you shall have children, Matvei, then you will know my pain and you will understand my life; and you will cease to curse others for their sins.”

  At this moment I really pitied him. I walked up and down the court and thought:

  “Again Thou threatenest me, O Lord. Again Thy hand is raised against me. Thou shouldst give me time to better myself and to find the straight path. Why art Thou so miserly with Thy grace? Is it not in Thy goodness that all Thy strength and power lie?”

  When I remember these words now I grow ashamed at my foolishness.

  My child was born and my wife became changed. Her voice was louder, her body taller, and in her attitude toward me there was a change, too. She counted every bite she gave me, although she was not exactly stingy. She gave alms less and less often and always reminded me of the peasants’ debts to us. Even if it were only five rubles, she thought it worth while to remind me of it. At first I thought, “that will pass.”

  I became more and more interested in the breeding of my birds. I went twice a month to town with my cages and brought five rubles or more each time I returned. We had a cow and a dozen hens. What more did we want?

  But Olga’s eyes had an unpleasant light in them. When I brought her a gift from town she reproached me:

  “Why did you do that? You should rather have saved the money.”

  It was hard to bear, and in order to get over it, I worked the harder among my birds. I went into the woods, laid the net and the snares, stretched myself out on the ground, whistled low and thought. My soul was quiet; not a wish stirred in me. A thought arose, moved my heart and vanished again into the unknown, as a stone sinks into the sea. It left ripples on my soul; they were feelings about God.

  At such times I looked upon the clear sky, the blue space, the woods clothed in golden autumn garments or in silvery winter treasure, and the river, the fields and the hills, the stars and the flowers, and saw them as God. All that was beautiful was of God and all that was of God was related to the soul.

  But when I thought of man, my heart started as a bird does when frightened in its sleep. I was perplexed and I thought about life. I could not unite the great beauty of God with the dark, poverty-stricken life of man. The luminous God was somewhere far off, in His own strength, in His own pride. And man, separated from Him, lived in wretchedness and want.

  Why were the children of God sacrificed to misery and hunger—Why were they lowered and dragged to the earth as worms in the mud? Why did God permit it? How could it give Him joy to see this degradation of His own work?

  Where was the man who saw God and His beauty? The soul of man is blinded through the black misery of the day. To be satisfied is considered a joy; to be rich a happiness. Man looks for the freedom to sin; but to be free from sin, that is unknown to him. Where is there in him the strength of fatherly love, where the beauty of God? Does God exist? Where is the God-like?

  Suddenly I felt a hazy intuition, a slight thought. It encircled and hid everything. My soul became empty and cold, like a field in winter. At this time, I did not dare express my thoughts in words, but even if they did not appear before me clothed in words, still I felt their power and dreaded them, and was afraid, as a little child in a dark cave. I jumped up, took my hunting traps with me, and hurried from the house. To rid myself of my sickly fear, I sang as I hurried along.

  The people in the village laughed at me. A catcher of birds is not especially respected in the country, and Olga sighed heavily many times; for it seemed to her, too, that my occupation was something to be ashamed of. My father-in-law gave me long lectures, but I did not answer. I waited for autumn. Perhaps I would draw a lucky number and not have to serve in the military, and so escape this terrible abyss.

  My wife became with child again, and her sadness increased.

  “What is the matter, Olga?” I asked.

  At first she evaded the question and made believe that nothing was troubling her. But one day she embraced me and said:

  “I shall die, Matvei—I shall die in childbirth.”

  I knew that women often talk thus, still I was frightened. I tried to comfort her, but she would not listen to me.

  “You will remain alone again,” she said, “beloved by none. You are so difficult and so haughty toward all. I ask you for the sake of the children, don’t be so proud. We are all sinners, before God, and you also.”

  She spoke this way often to me, and I was wretched with pity and fear for her.

  As to my father-in-law, I had made a sort of truce with him, and he immediately made use of it in his own way:

  “Here, Matvei, sign this,” or “Do not write that.”

  Things were coming to a climax. We were, close to the recruiting time, and a second child was soon expected. The recruits were making holiday in the village. They called me out, but I refused to go, and they broke my windows for me.

  The day came when I had to go to town to draw my lot. Olga was already afraid at this time to leave the house, and my father-in-law accompanied me and during the whole way he impressed it upon me what trouble he had taken for me, how much money he had spent and how everything had been arranged for my benefit.

  “Perhaps it is all in vain,” I said.

  And so it was. My number came along the last, and I was free. Titoff could hardly believe my luck and he laughed at me gloomily.

  “It seems really that God is with you.”

  I did not answer, but I was unspeakably happy. My freedom meant everything to me—everything that oppressed my soul. And above all, it meant freedom from my dear fath
er-in-law.

  At home Olga’s joy was great. She wept and laughed, the dear one; praised and caressed me as if I had killed a bear.

  “God be praised,” she said; “now I can die in peace.”

  I poked fun at her, but at the bottom of my heart I felt badly, for I knew that she believed in her death—a ruinous belief, which destroys the life force in man.

  Three days later her travail began. For two long days she suffered horrible agony, and on the third day it was ended, after giving birth to a still-born child—ended as she had believed, my dear, sweet one.

  I do not remember the burial, for I was as if blind and deaf for some time afterward. It was Titoff who woke me. I was at Olga’s grave, and I can see him now as he stood before me and looked into my face, and said:

  “So, Matvei, it is for the second time that we meet near the dead. Here our friendship was born. Here it should be strengthened anew.”

  I looked about me as if I had found myself on earth for the first time. The rain drizzled, a mist surrounded everything, in which the bare trees swayed and the crosses on the tombstones swam and vanished. Everything looked dressed, garbed in cold, and in a piercing dampness which was difficult to breathe, as if the rain and the mist had sucked up all the air.

  “What do you want? Go away from here,” I said to Titoff.

  “I want you to understand my pain. Perhaps because I hindered you from living out your own life God has now punished me by taking away my daughter.”

  The earth under my feet was melting and turned into sticky mud, which seemed to drag down my feet. I clutched him, threw him on the ground as if he were a sack of bran.

  “Damn you!” I shouted.

  A mad, wild period began for me. I could not hold my head up. I was as if struck down by some strong hand and lay stretched out powerless on the ground. My heart was full of pain and I was outraged with God. I looked up at the holy images and hurried away as fast as I could, for I wanted to quarrel, not to repent. I knew that according to the law I had to do penance and should have said:

  “Thy will be done, O Lord. Thy hand is heavy, but righteous; Thy wrath is great yet beneficent.”

  My conscience did not let me say such words. I remained standing, lost in my thoughts, and was unable to find myself.

  “Has this blow fallen upon me,” I thought, “because I doubted Thy existence in secret?”

  This thought terrified me and I found excuses for myself:

  “It was not Thy existence that I doubted, but Thy mercy; for it seemed to me that we are all abandoned by Thee without help and without guidance.”

  My soul was unbearably tortured; I could not sleep; I could do nothing. At night dark shadows tried to strangle me. Olga appeared before me. My heart was overcome with fear and I had no more strength to live.

  I decided to hang myself.

  It was night. I lay dressed on my bed. I glanced about me. I could see my poor, innocent wife before me, her blue eyes shining with a quiet light and calling me. The moon shone through the window and its bright reflection lay upon the floor and only increased the darkness in my soul.

  I jumped up, took the rope from my bird snare, hammered a nail into the beam of the roof, made a noose and fixed the chair. I had already taken off my coat and tom off my collar, when suddenly I saw a little face appear indistinctly and mysteriously on the wall. I could have screamed with fear, though I understood that it was my own face which looked back at me from Olga’s round mirror. I looked insane—so distracted and wretched, with my hair wild, my cheeks sunken in, my nose sharp, my mouth half open as with asthma, and my eyes agonized, full of a deep, great pain.

  I pitied this human face; I pitied it for the beauty that had gone out of it, and I sat down on the bench and wept over myself, as a child who is hurt. After those tears the noose seemed something to be ashamed of, like a joke against myself. And in wrath I tore it down and threw it into the corner of the room. Death was also a riddle, but I had not yet answered the riddle of life!

  What should I do? Some more days passed. It was as if I were seeking peace. I must do penance, I thought, and I gritted my teeth and went to the priest.

  I visited him one Sunday evening, just as he and his wife were at table drinking tea. Four children sat around them. Drops of sweat shone on the dark face of the priest, as scales on a fish.

  “Sit down,” he said, good-naturedly, “and drink some tea with us.”

  The room was warm and dry; everything was clean and in order. It occurred to me how negligent this priest was in the performance of his church duties, and the thought came to me, “This, then, is his church.”

  I was not sufficiently humble.

  “Well, Matvei, you suffer?” the priest asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Ah, then you must say the Forty-Day prayers. Does she appear in dreams to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then only the Forty-Day prayer will help you. That is certain.”

  I remained silent. I could not speak before the wife of the priest. I did not like her. She was a large, stout, short-winded woman, with a broad, fat face. She lent money on interest.

  “Pray earnestly,” the priest said to me. “And do not eat your heart. It is a sin against the Lord. He knows what He does.”

  “Does He really know?” I asked.

  “Certainly. Oh, oh, my young man, I know well that you are proud toward people, but do not dare to carry your pride against the laws of God. You will be punished a hundredfold more severely. This sour stuff which ferments in you comes from the time of Larion, does it not? I know the heresies which he committed when he was drunk—remember this!”

  Here the priest’s wife interrupted:

  “They should have sent that Larion to a monastery, but the father was too good and did not even complain about him.”

  “That is not true,” I answered. “He did complain, but not on account of his opinions, but because of his negligence, for which the father himself was to blame.”

  We began to quarrel. First he reproached me for my insolence, and then he began talking about things which I knew just as well as he, but the meaning of which, in his anger, he changed. And then they both began, he as well as his wife, to insult me.

  “You are both rascals,” they cried, “you and your father-in-law! You have robbed the church. The swampy field belonged to the church from time immemorial, and that is why God has punished you.”

  “You are right,” I said. “The swampy field was taken from you unjustly. But you yourself had taken it away from the peasants.”

  I rose and wanted to go.

  “Stop!” cried the priest, “and the money for the Forty-Day prayer?”

  “It is not necessary,” I answered.

  I went out and thought: “Here you have found comfort for your soul, Matvei.”

  Three days later, Sasha, my little son, died. He had mistaken arsenic for sugar, and eaten it.

  His death made no impression on me. I had become cold and indifferent to everything.

  CHAPTER VII

  I decided to go to a town, where an arch-bishop lived—a pious, learned man, who disputed continually with the Old Believers about the true faith and was renowned for his wisdom. I told my father-in-law that I was going away and that he could have my house and all that I possessed for a hundred rubles.

  “No,” he answered, “that is not the way to do business. You must sign me a note for half a year for three hundred rubles.”

  I signed it, ordered my passport and began my trip. I walked on foot, for I thought that thus the confusion in my soul would subside. But although I walked to do penance, still my thoughts were not with God. I was afraid and angry with myself. My thoughts were distorted and they fell apart like worn-out cloth. The sky was dark above me.

  With great difficulty I reached the Ar
chbishop. A servant, a pretty, delicate youngster, who received the visitors, would not let me enter. Four times he sent me back, saying:

  “I am the secretary. You must give me three rubles.”

  “I won’t give you a three-kopeck piece,” I said.

  “Then I won’t let you in.”

  “All right. Then I’ll go in myself.”

  He saw that I was determined not to give in to him.

  “Well, then, come in,” he said. “I was only joking. You are a funny fellow.”

  He led me into a little room, where a gray old man sat coughing in a corner of a divan, dressed in a green cassock. His face was wrinkled and his eyes were very stern and set deep in his forehead.

  “Well,” I thought, “he can tell me something.”

  “What do you want?” he asked me.

  “My soul is troubled, father.”

  The secretary stood behind me and whispered:

  “You must say ‘your reverence.’”

  “Send the servant away,” I said. “It is difficult for me to speak when he is here.”

  The Archbishop looked at me, bit his lip and ordered:

  “Go behind the door, Alexei. Well, what have you done?”

  “I doubt God’s mercy,” I answered.

  He put his hand on his forehead, looked at me for some time and then muttered in a singing voice: “What? What’s that? You fool!”

  There was no need to insult me, and perhaps he did not mean it in that way. Our superiors insult people more out of habit and foolishness than from ill will. I said to him:

  “Hear me, your reverence.”

  I sat down on a chair. But the old man motioned with his hands and shouted:

  “Stand up! Stand up! You should kneel before me, impious one!”

  “Why should I kneel? If I am guilty, I should kneel before God, not before you.”

  He became enraged. “Who am I? What am I to you? What am I to God?”

  I was ashamed to quarrel with him on account of a bagatelle, so I knelt. He threatened me with his finger and said: