by Maxim Gorky
At night a little old monk led me to a shed, and there I saw the same man. I lay down next to him and began to speak low:
“How is it, sir, that you spend the night together with these common people? To judge by your clothes, your place is in the inn.”
“I have taken an oath to be among the lowest of the low for three months. I want to fulfil my pious work to the very end, and let myself be eaten up by lice with the rest of them. I really cannot bear to see wounds—they make me sick; still, no matter how disgusting it is to me, I wash the feet of the pilgrims every day. It is a difficult service to the Lord, but my hope in His mercy is great.”
I lost my desire to speak to him, and, making believe I had fallen asleep, I lay thinking, “his sacrifice to God is not over great.”
The straw underneath my neighbor rustled. He arose carefully, knelt down and prayed, at first silently, but later I heard his whispered words:
“Oh, thou, St. Cyril, intercede before God for me, a sinner, and make Him heal me of my wounds and sores as I have healed the wounds of men. All-seeing God, value my labors and help me. My life is in Thy hands. I know that my passions were violent, but Thou hast already punished me enough. Do not abandon me like a dog, and let not Thy people drive me away, I beg of Thee, and let my prayers arise toward Thee like the smoke of incense.” Here was a man who had mistaken God for a doctor. It was unbearable to me, and I closed my ears with my hands.
When he had finished praying he took out something to eat from his bag and chewed for a long time, like a boar.
I have met many such people. At night they creep before their God, while in the day they walk pitilessly over the breasts of men. They lower God to do the duty of hiding their vile actions, and they bribe him and bargain with him.
“Do not forget, O Lord, how much I have given Thee.”
Blind slaves of greed, they place it high above themselves and bow down to this hideous idol of the dark and cowardly souls and pray to it.
“O Lord, do not judge me in Thy severity nor punish me in Thy wrath.”
They walk upon earth like spies of God and judges of men, and watch sharply for any violation of the church laws. They bustle and flock together, accusing and complaining. “Faith is being extinguished in the hearts of people; woe unto us!”
One man especially amused me with his zeal. We walked together from Perejaslavlja to Rostoff, and the whole way he kept crying out to me, “Where are the holy laws of Feodor Studite?”
He was well fed, healthy, with a black beard and rosy cheeks; had money, and at night mixed with the women in the inns.
“When I saw how the laws were violated and the people depraved,” he said to me, “all the peace of my soul went from me. I gave my business, which was a brick factory, to my sons to manage, and here I am, wandering about for four years, watching everything, and horror fills my soul. Rats have crawled into the Holy Sacristy, and have gnawed with their sharp teeth the holy laws, and the people are angry with the church, and have fallen away from her breast into vile heresies and sects. And what does the church militant do against this? It increases its wealth and lets its enemies grow. The church should live in poverty, like poor Lazarus, so that the people might see what true holiness poverty is, as Christ preached it. The people on seeing this would stop complaining and desiring the wealth of others. What other task has the church but to hold back the people with strong reins?”
Those sticklers for the law cannot hide their thoughts when they see its weakness, and they shamelessly disclose their secret selves.
On the Holy Hill a certain merchant, who was a noted traveler and who described his pilgrimages in holy places in clerical papers, was preaching to the crowd humility, patience and kindness.
He spoke warmly, even to tears. He entreated and he threatened, and the crowd listened, silent and with bowed heads.
I interrupted his speech and asked him “if open lawlessness should be suffered also.”
“Suffer it, my friend,” he cried; “undoubtedly suffer it. Christ himself suffered for us and for our salvation.”
“How then,” I answered, “about the martyrs and the fathers of the church? For instance, take St. John Chrysostom, who was bold and accused even kings.”
He became enraged, flared up at me and stamped his feet. “What are you chattering there, you blunderer? Whom did they accuse? Heathens!”
“Was Eudoxia a heathen, or Ivan the Terrible?”
“That is not the point,” he cried, waving his arms like a volunteer at a Are. “Do not speak about kings, but about the people—the people, that’s the important thing. They are all sophisticated, and have no fear. They are serpents which the church ought to crush; that is her duty.”
Although he spoke simply, I did not understand at this time what all this anxiety about the people was, and though his words caused me fear, I still did not understand them, for I was spiritually blind and did not see the people.
After my discussion with this writer several men came up and spoke to me, as if they did not expect anything good from me.
“There is another fellow here; don’t you want to meet him?”
Toward vespers a meeting was arranged for me with this young man in the wood near the lake. He was dark, as if blasted by lightning. His hair was cut short, and his look was dry and sharp; his face was all bone, from which two brown eyes burned brightly. The young man coughed continually and trembled. He looked at me hostilely and, breathing with difficulty, said: “They told me about you—that you scoff at patience and kindness. Why? Explain.”
I do not remember what I said to him, but as I argued I only noticed his tortured face and his dying voice when he cried to me: “We are not for this life, but for the next. Heaven is our country. Do you hear it?”
A lame soldier, who had lost his leg in the Tekinsky War, stood opposite him and said gloomily: “My opinion, Orthodox, is this: Wherever there is less fear there is more truth,” and turning to the young man he said: “If you are afraid of death that is your affair, but do not frighten the others. We have been frightened enough without you. Now you, red-head, speak.”
The young man vanished soon after, but the people remained—a crowd of about half a hundred—to listen to me. I do not know with what I attracted their attention, but I was pleased that they heard me, and I spoke for a long time in the twilight, among the tall pines and the serious people.
I remember that all their faces fused into one long, sorrowful face, thoughtful and strong-willed, dumb in words but bold in secret thoughts, and in its hundred eyes I saw an unquenchable fire which was related to my soul.
Later this single face disappeared from my memory, and only long after I understood that it was this centralization of the will of the people into one thought which arouses the anxiety of the guardians of the law and makes them fear. Even if this thought is not yet born or developed, still the spirit is enriched by the doubt in the indestructibility of hostile laws—whence the worry of the guardians of the law. They see this firm-willed, questioning look; they see the people wander upon the earth, quiet and silent, and they feel the unseeing rays of their thoughts, and they understand that the secret fire of their dumb councils can turn their laws into ashes, and that other laws are possible.
They have a fine ear for this, like thieves who hear the careful movements of the awakened owner whose house they have come to rob in the night, and they know that when the people shall open its eyes life will change and its face turn toward heaven.
The people have no God so long as they live divided and hostile to one another. And of what good is a living God to a satisfied man? He seeks only a justification for his full stomach amid the general starvation around him.
His lone life is pitiful and grotesque, surrounded on all sides by horror.
CHAPTER XV
One time I noticed that a little, old, gray man, clean like a sc
raped bone, watched me eagerly. His eyes were set deep in his head, as if they had been frightened back. He was shriveled up, but strong like a buck and quick on his feet. He used to sidle up toward people and was always in the center of a crowd. He marched and scrutinized each face as if looking for an acquaintance. He seemed to want something from me but did not dare ask for it, and I pitied his timidity.
I was going to Lubin, to the sitting Aphanasia, and he followed me silently, leaning on his white staff. I asked him, “Have you been wandering long, Uncle?”
He grew happy, shook his head and tittered.
“Nine years already, my boy, nine years.”
“You must be carrying a great sin,” I said.
“Where is there measure or weight for sin? Only God knows my sins.”
“Nevertheless, what have you done?” I laughed and he smiled.
“Nothing,” he answered. “I have lived on the whole as every one else. I am a Siberian from beyond Tobolsk. I was a driver in my youth and later had an inn with a saloon and also kept a store.”
“You’ve robbed some one.” The old man started.
“Why, what is the matter with you? God save me from it.”
“I was only joking,” I said. “I saw a little man trotting along, and I thought to myself, how could such a little man commit a big sin.” The old man stopped and shook his head.
“All souls have the same size,” he answered, “and they are all equally acceptable to the devil. But tell me, what do you think about death? You have spoken in the shelters about life, always about life. But where is death?”
“Here somewhere,” I answered.
He threatened me with his finger jokingly and said: “It is here. That’s it, it is always here.”
“Well, what if it is?” I asked.
“It is here,” and rising on his tiptoes he whispered into my ear, “Death is all powerful. Even Christ could not escape it. ‘Let this cup pass from me,’ He said, but the Heavenly Father did not let it pass. He could not. There is a saying, ‘Death appears and the sun disappears,’ you see.”
The little, old man began to talk like a stream rushing down a mountain. “Death circles around us all and man walks along as if he were crossing a precipice on a tightrope; one push with Death’s wing and man is no more. O Lord, by Thy force Thou hast strengthened the world, but how has He strengthened it if death is placed above everything? You can be bold in thought, steeped in learning, but you will only live as long as death permits you.” He smiled, but his eyes were full of tears.
What could I say to him? I had never thought of death and now I had no time.
He skipped along beside me, looking into my face with his faded eyes, his beard trembling and his left hand hid in the bosom of his cloak. He kept looking about him as if he expected death to jump out from some bush and catch him by the hand and throw him into hell.
I looked at him astonished.
Around us all life surged. The earth was covered with the emerald foam of the grass, unseen larks sang, and everything grew toward the sun in many colored brilliant shouts of gladness.
“How did you get such thoughts?” I asked my traveling companion. “Have you been very sick?”
“No,” he said. “Up to my forty-seventh year I lived peacefully and contentedly, and then my wife died and my daughter-in-law hanged herself. Both were lost in the same year.”
“Maybe you yourself drove her to the noose.”
“No, it was from her own depravity that she killed herself. I did not bother her, though even if I had lived with her, it would have been forgiven in a widower. I am no priest, and she was no stranger to me. Even when my wife was alive I lived like a widower. She was sick for four years and did not once come down from the stove. When she died I crossed myself. ‘Thank God,’ I said, ‘I am free.’ I wanted to marry again when suddenly the thought occurred to me I live well, I am contented, but yet I have to die. Why should it be so? I was overcome. I gave everything I had to my son and began my wandering. I thought that on the road I would not notice that I was going to the grave, for everything about me was gay and shining and seemed to lead away from the graveyard. However, it is all the same.”
“Your heart is heavy, Uncle?” I asked him.
“Oh, my son, it is so terrible I cannot describe it. In the daytime I try to be among people that I may hide behind them. Death is blind, perhaps it might not see me or make a mistake and take some one else, but at night, when each one remains unprotected, it is terrible to lie awake without sleep. It seems to me then that a black hand sweeps over me, feeling my breast and searching, ‘Are you here? ‘It plays with my heart like a cat with a mouse and my heart becomes frightened and beats. I get up and look about me. There are people lying down, but who knows whether they will arise? It happens that death takes away in crowds. In our village it took a whole family, a husband, a wife and two daughters who died of coal smoke in the bath house.”
His mouth twitched in a vain effort to smile, but tears flowed from his eyes.
“If one would only die within a little hour, or in sleep, but first there comes sickness to eat one away little by little.”
He frowned and his face contracted and looked like mildew. He walked quickly, almost skipping, but the light went out of his eyes, and he kept muttering in a low voice, neither to me nor to himself: “Oh, Lord, let me be a mosquito, only to live on the earth! Do not kill me, Lord; let me be a bug or even a little spider!”
“How pitiable!” I thought.
At the station, among people, he seemed to revive again, and he talked about his mistress, Death, but with courage. He preached to the people. “You will die,” he said; “You will be destroyed on an unknown day and in an unknown hour. Perhaps three versts from here the lightning will strike you down.”
He made some sad and others angry, and they quarreled with him. One young woman called out: “You have nothing the matter with you, and yet death bothers you.”
She said it with such anger that I noticed her, and even the old man stopped his eulogy on death.
All the way to Lubin he comforted me, until he bored me to death. I have seen many such people who run away from death and foolishly play hide-and-seek with it. Even among the young there are some struck by fear, and they are worse than the old. They are all Godless; their souls are black within, like the pipe of a stove, and fear whistles through them even in the fairest weather. Their thoughts are like old pilgrims who patter on the earth, walking without knowing whither and blindly trampling under foot the living things in their path. They have the name of God on their lips, but they love no one and have no desire for anything. They are occupied with only one thing: To pass on their fears to others, so that people will take them up, the beggars, and comfort them.
They do not go to people to get honey, but that they may pour into another soul the deadly poison of their putrid selves. They love themselves and are without shame in their poverty, and resemble crippled beggars who sit on the road on the way to church and disclose their wounds and their sores and their deformities to people, that they may awaken pity and receive a copper.
They wander, sowing everywhere the gloomy seeds of unrest, and groan aloud, with the desire to hear their groans reecho. But around them surges a mighty wave—the wave of humble seekers for God and human suffering surrounds them many colored. For instance, like that of the young woman, the little Russian, who had talked up to the old man. She walked silent, her lips compressed, her face sunburnt and angry, and her eyes burning with a keen fire.. If spoken to she answered sharply, as if she wanted to stick you with a knife.
“Rather than getting angry,” I said to her, “you had better tell me your trouble. You might feel better afterward.”
“What do you want of me?”
“I don’t want anything; don’t be afraid.”
“I am not afraid; but you are dis
gusting to me.” “Why am I disgusting?”
“Stop insisting or I will call the people.” And so she struck out at every one—old and young, and women, too.
“I do not need you,” I answered. “I need your pain, for I want to know why people suffer.”
She looked at me sideways and answered, “Go to others. They are all in need, the devil take them.” “Why curse them?”
“Because I want to.”
She seemed to me like one possessed.
“For whom are you making this pilgrimage?” I asked.
A smile spread over her face. She slackened her pace and she talked, though not to me:
“Last spring my husband went down the Dneiper to float lumber, and he never came back. Perhaps he was drowned, or perhaps he found another wife—who knows? My father-in-law and mother-in-law are very poor and very bad. I have two children-a boy and a girl—and how was I to feed them? I was ready to work—to break myself in two working—? but there was no work. And what can a woman earn? My father-in-law scolded. ‘You and your children are a millstone around our necks, with your eating and drinking.’ My mother-in-law nagged, ‘You are young yet; go to the monastery; the monks desire women, and you can earn much money.’ I could not stand the hunger of the children, and so I went. Should I have drowned them? I went.”
She talked as in her sleep, through her teeth and indistinctly, and her eyes cried out with the pain of motherhood.
“My son is already in his fourth year; his name is Ossip and my daughter’s name is Ganka. I beat them when they asked for bread; I beat them. I have wandered a whole month and I have earned four rubles. The monks are miserly. I would have earned more at honest labor. Oh, those devils! What waters can wash me now?”
I felt I ought to say something to her, so I said: “On account of your children, God will forgive you.”
Here she cried out at me. “What is that to me? I’m not guilty before God! If He doesn’t forgive me, He doesn’t have to, and if He forgives me, I myself cannot forget it. It cannot be worse in hell. There the children will not be with me.”
