The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “In prison,” he laughed.

  “Why?”

  “For criticizing.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Ask Mikhail,” he said. “I have to go to work now.”

  He went away.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  I was very much astonished at his words. I could hardly believe them, but in the evening Mikhail confirmed them. All evening he told me about the cruel persecutions. It seemed that for such speeches as I had made thousands of people suffered death, were sent to Siberia and to the mines; yet, though the slaughter of Herod was in no way diminishing, the faithful were ever increasing in numbers.

  Something grew and became clear in my soul, and the speeches of Mikhail and his comrades took on another meaning, for, first of all, if a man was ready to give up his freedom and even his life for his faith, it meant that he was a sincere believer, and he resembled the early martyrs who followed the laws of Christ.

  Mikhail’s words grew connected and blossomed out and came close to my soul. I do not mean to say that I understood his words at once and fathomed their depths, but for the first time that evening I felt their close relationship to my heart, and the whole earth seemed to me a Bethlehem saturated with the blood of children. I grew to understand the keen desire of the Virgin Mother when, looking upon hell, she asked of the Archangel Mikhail: “Oh, Archangel, let me suffer in this fire. Let me take part in this great agony.” Only that here I did not see sinners, but righteous ones, wishing to destroy the hell upon earth, for the sake of which they were serenely prepared to undergo all suffering.

  “Perhaps there are no longer holy anchorites,” I said to Mikhail, “because man is not going away from the world, but toward the world.”

  “The true faith,” he answered, “comes out in a true movement.”

  “Take me into this movement,” I begged of him.

  Everything burned within me.

  “No,” he answered. “Wait a while and consider it. It is still too soon for you. If you, with your character, should fall into the enemy’s noose at present, you would be entangled in it uselessly and for a long time. On the other hand, you ought to go away after what you have said. There is much that is still not clear to you, and you are not free enough for our work. Its great beauty has captivated and allured you, but though it is displayed before you in its whole strength you stand before it as if you were standing in a square room from which you can see the temple being built, in all its immensity and beauty. But it is being built quietly and evenly day by day, and if you are not familiar with the whole plan, the sublime temple will disappear and vanish from your vision, and the vision, which was not deep in your soul, will vanish and the labor of building will seem beyond your strength.”

  “Why do you quench my ardor?” I asked him with pain. “I have found a place for myself and was happy when I saw that I could be useful.”

  He answered me calmly and sadly:

  “I do not consider that you are capable of living by a plan which is not clear to you, and I see that the consciousness of your relation to the spirit of the working class has not yet arisen in your soul. You have been sharpened by the friction of life, and you stand in advance of the thought of the people. You do not look upon yourself as one of them, but it seems to me that you consider yourself a hero, ready to give alms to the weak from the overflow of your strength; that you consider yourself something special, living for yourself, and that in yourself is the beginning and end, and that you are not a link in the exquisite and immense unending chain.”

  I began to understand why he sent me back to earth and unconsciously felt that his words were right.

  “You should begin wandering again,” he said, “to look upon the life of the people with new eyes. Do not take books along with you. Reading will give you nothing. You do not yet believe that it is not human intelligence which is found in books, but the infinite diversity of the striving of the soul of the people toward freedom. Books do not seek to master you, but give you the weapon for emancipation; you do not yet understand how to hold this weapon in your hand.”

  He spoke truly. Books were strangers to me at this time. I was used to church writings, but I could not grasp worldly thought except with great difficulty. The spoken word gave me much more than the written. The thoughts which I gathered from books lay on the surface of my soul and were quickly effaced and melted away by my fire. They did not answer my principal question: What was the law which governed God, and why, if man was made in His image, did He degrade him against His will? And, moreover, whose was this will?

  Side by side with this question, not antagonizing it, lived another. Was God brought down from heaven on this earth, or was He raised from earth up to heaven by the strength of the people? And here arose the burning thought that the creation of God was the eternal work of the whole people.

  My heart was cut in two. I wanted to remain with these people, yet something pulled me to go away and prove my new thought and to search for this unknown something which robbed me of my liberty and confused my spirit.

  Uncle Peter urged me also: “You ought to go away for some time, Matvei. There has been some dangerous talk about your speech.”

  And soon things decided themselves without my control. One night a messenger came on horseback from a neighboring factory with the announcement that gendarmes were making house searches in their place and that undoubtedly they would soon be here.

  “Ah, it is too soon,” said Mikhail with anger.

  There was a hurrying and scurrying to and fro and Uncle Peter cried to me:

  “Go, Matvei, go! You have nothing to do here. You did not make the soup and you needn’t eat it.”

  Mikhail insisted, looking straight into my face.

  “You had better go away from here. Your presence will help very little and may do some harm.”

  I understood that they wanted to get rid of me, and it hurt me. But at this time I felt that I was afraid of the gendarmes. I did not see them, yet I feared them! I knew that it was not right to leave people in their need, but I succumbed to their will. They sent me away.

  I went up the mountain to the wood through underbrush, between tree stumps. I stumbled as if I was held by my heels. Behind me a young boy hurried along, Ivan Vikof, with a great pack on his back. He was sent to hide books in the wood.

  We ran forward to the edge of the wood. He found a hiding place and buried his burden. He was calm, but not I.

  “Will they come here?” I asked him.

  “Who knows?” he answered. “Perhaps they will come here. You must hurry.”

  He was an awkward boy, and he looked as if he were hacked out from an oak-tree with an ax. His head was large, one shoulder was higher than the other, his long arms were out of proportion, and his voice was sad.

  “Are you afraid?” I asked him.

  “Of what?”

  “That they will come and take you.”

  “If they only don’t find what I have hidden, I don’t care what they do.”

  He arranged the books with care in the pit, covered them over, smoothed the earth down and threw brush upon it. He sat down on the ground, and seeing that I was getting ready to go away, he said:

  “Some one will come with a note for you. Wait.” “What kind of a note?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked out from the trees into the valley. The factory breathed heavily, like a strong man who is being choked. It seemed to me that men were being pursued in the streets and that in the darkness they ran after one another; they fought, they snarled in anger, ready to break each other’s bones. And Ivan, without haste, was getting ready to go down.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “They will take you.”

  “I am not long in the movement, and they do not know me. And if they take me, there is no
harm done. People come out wiser from prison.”

  Here some one loudly and clearly asked me: “How is it, Matvei? You are not afraid of God, and yet you fear the gendarmes.”

  I looked at Ivan. He was standing and gazing down thoughtfully.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “You read many books in prison.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  There were several lies that were rotting within me, and shameful questions shot up with piercing sparks. The night was cold, but I burned.

  “I am going with you.”

  “You must not,” Ivan said sternly. “They will certainly arrest you. This whole trouble began on account of your speech.”

  “How?”

  “A priest in Verkhotour gave it away.”

  I sat down on the ground and said to myself:

  “Then I have to go.”

  But fear took hold of me.

  “Some one is running,” Ivan whispered low.

  I looked down from the mountain. Thick shadows were crawling over it. The sky was clouded, the moon in its last quarter now showed itself, now hid itself in the clouds. The whole earth about me moved, and from this noiseless movement something oppressive and fearful fell on me. I watched the torrents of shadows which flowed over the earth and which covered up the undergrowth and my soul with black veils.

  A head moved among the brush, jumping like a ball among the branches. Ivan whistled low and said:

  “It is Kostia!”

  I knew Kostia. He was a boy of about fifteen, blue-eyed, blond and weak. He had finished school two years ago. Mikhail was preparing him to be his assistant.

  I understood that I was thinking about these little details on purpose, for I wanted to put my thoughts aside and stifle my shame and my fear.

  Kostia arrived panting, his voice broken.

  “They have arrived. They have asked for you, Monk. Here, Uncle Peter wrote a note and told me to take you to the Lobanofsky monastery. Let us go.”

  I rose and said to Ivan: “Good-by, brother. Greet them all for me and ask them to forgive me.”

  But Kostia pushed me and commanded me severely:

  “Go along! Whom are you greeting? They are all taken like hens for the market.”

  We went along. Kostia went ahead, telling me in a low voice all that he saw below, and I followed him. But I was pulled from all sides, by my hands and the skirts of my coat, as if some one were asking me:

  “Where are you going? You have entrapped people and you yourself are escaping.”

  I spoke aloud, to myself: “So on account of me people were lost!”

  The boy answered: “Not on account of you, but on account of truth. Are you truth? What a queer fellow!”

  His words were funny and he himself was small, but still they struck home. I wanted to set myself right before him, and I laid out my thoughts as a beggar lays out the crumbs from his bag.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is evident that a great untruth lives within me.”

  He muttered, answering each one of my words like a conscience:

  “Why great? You must always have something greater in you than any one else.”

  “Those are not his words,” I thought. “He has copied them from some one.”

  “Kostin was right when he called you a bell tower. But you are not the kind that rings only for mass, but one which rings by itself, because it was built crooked and the bells are badly hung.”

  He remained silent, and then he added:

  “I don’t like you, Monk. You are so strange.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Are you really a Russian? I don’t think you are good.”

  At any other time I would have become angry, but now I was silent. I became suddenly weak, tired unto death. Night and the wood were around us. Between the trees the gray darkness fell thickly and became dense. It w as difficult to tell which was night and which was tree. The moonbeams glistened above, broke themselves upon the body of the darkness and vanished. It was quiet. All these people, beginning with Juna, bore no fear. Some were filled with anger, others were always gay, and most of them were quiet, modest people, who seemed to be ashamed to show their goodness.

  Kostia walked along the path, and his blond head shone like a light before me. I recalled the youth of Bartholomew, the God-child Alexei and others. No, that was not the right!

  My thoughts were like water-hens in a puddle, jumping from stump to stump.

  “Have you read the 4 Lives of the Saints’?” I asked the boy.

  “I read them when I was little. My mother made me. Why?”

  “Did you like those chosen ones of God?”

  “I don’t know. Ponteleimon I liked; and George also. He fought with the dragon. But I don’t know what good it did the people to have dozens of them made holy.”

  Kostia grew in my eyes.

  “If a Czar’s daughter or a rich man’s daughter believed in Christ and underwent martyrdom for her belief, neither the Czar nor the kingdom were ever better to the people for it? It is not spoken of in the legends that the tyrant Czars became good.”

  Then, after a silence, he said:

  “Nor do I know of what good Christ’s martyrdom was. He wanted to conquer suffering, and what came of it?”

  He grew thoughtful and then added:

  “Nothing came of it.”

  I wanted to embrace him. Pity arose in my heart for Kostia, for Christ, for all the people who remained in the village, for the whole human world. And what of me? Where was my place? Where was I going?

  The darkness of the short night was lifting, and from above a quiet light came through the branches of the pine trees.

  “You are not tired, Kostia?”

  “I?” the small boy answered proudly. “No. I like to walk in the night. It seems to me then that I walk through wonderland. I love fairy tales.”

  At dawn we lay down to sleep. Kostia fell asleep quickly, as if he had dived into a river, but I circled around my thoughts like a Tartar beggar around a Christian church in winter. It is stormy and cold in the street, but it is forbidden by Mohammed to enter the temple.

  I decided upon something towards morning, and when the boy awoke, I said to him:

  “Forgive me that I made you walk with me for nothing. I am not going to the monastery. I don’t want to hide.”

  He looked at me seriously and said:

  “You have already hidden.” Then, without looking at me, he began to wave a twig.

  “Well, good-by, dear.”

  He bowed his head: “Good-by,” he answered.

  I went away, then looked back. He stood there among the trees following me with his eyes.

  “Eh,” he cried, “good-by!”

  It pleased me that he said it with more tenderness this time.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Like one sick, I wandered for many days, full of heavy heartache. A fire raged in my soul, that quiet piece of land of mine, and lit it up like a meadow in the wood, and my thoughts now crawled ahead of me, together with my shadow; now dragged behind, like biting smoke. Was I ashamed or not? I do not remember and I cannot say. A black thought was born in my mind and fluttered about me like a bat. “They are Godless ones, not God-creators.”

  But heavier and broader than all my thoughts, was a hollow stillness in me, lazy and deep; a certain peace like a turbid pool, in the depths of whose heart dumb thoughts swam about with difficulty, like frightened fish who struggle but cannot rise to the light from out of the oppressive depths.

  Little reached me from the outside, and I remember my meetings with men as through a dream. Somewhere near Omsk, at a village market, I woke up. A blind man sat on the road in the dust and sang a song. His guide knelt near him and accompanied him on his
accordion. The old man looked up at heaven with his empty eyes and sang the words with a faraway, rusty voice, describing the past, under the reign of Ivan Vasilef, and the accordion gave out its hollow accompaniment, “U-u-u.”

  I sat down on the ground next to the blind man. He took hold of my hand, held it, let it go again, but did not stop singing: “Once there lived Ermak, a son of Timotheof.” “A-a-a,” the accordion repeated.

  And around the singers a crowd collected quietly, listening thoughtfully and seriously to the story of the past, with heads bowed to the ground. A dry warmth enfolded me and I saw curiosity light up the eyes of the men, and some one asked:

  “Won’t he sing?”

  “He will. Wait.”

  I had often heard these robber ballads, but I never knew whose were the words nor whose the soul mirrored there. But now all at once I understood. The ancient people spoke to me with a thousand tongues. “I pardon your great sins against me, man, for your small service.”

  People still looked at me with, curiosity, and my spirit was aroused. The old man finished his song, and I arose and said:

  “Orthodox Christians, here you have heard about a robber who plundered and robbed the people, but, afterwards, his conscience troubling him, he went away to save his soul, wishing to serve the people with his great strength. And he served them. But to-day you are living among robbers who exploit you mercilessly, and in what way do they serve the people? What good do you see in them?”

  The crowd thickened around me, almost embracing me, and their attention made my words grow strong and gave them tone and beauty, and I lost myself in my words. I only felt a close alliance to the earth and to the people. They lifted me up towards themselves, drawing me on by their silence: “Speak; speak the whole truth as you see it!”

  Of course a policeman arrived and cried: “Move on!” asking what was the matter and demanding my passport.

  The people melted quietly away, like a cloud in the sun, and the policeman questioned and made inquiries as to what I said. Some answered: “About God; about many things; mainly about God.”

  I saw a workingman standing apart. He leaned up against his wagon and gazed steadily at me, smiling tenderly. The policeman had taken hold of my collar, and I wanted to shake him off, but I saw that the people looked sideways at me, with half-closed eyes, as if they were asking: “Now, what are you going to say?”