The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  I paled at their lack of faith. Conquering myself in time, I shook off the hand of the policeman and said to him:

  “Do you want to know what I said?”

  And again I began to speak about injustice in life. Again the market people gathered around me in great crowds, and the policeman was lost in them and effaced.

  I recalled Kostia and the factory children, and I felt proud and happy. I became strong and as in a dream. The policeman whispered, many faces passed before me, many eyes burned; a warm cloud of people were around me, pushed me along, and I lay lightly among them. Some one took me by the shoulder and whispered in my ear: “Enough. Go.”

  They pushed and pushed me, and soon I found myself in a kind of court, and a black-bearded man was on one side of me and on the other a young boy with no cap on his head. The dark man said:

  “Climb over the wall.”

  I climbed it, then went over another. It seemed to me queer, yet pleasant.

  “Eh,” I thought, “is that who you are?”

  The black-bearded man hurried me along. “Lively, comrade, lively!”

  I asked him on the way: “Who are you?”

  “One of yours,” he answered.

  The boy without the cap followed us silently. We crossed gardens, came to a ravine at the bottom of which a stream ran along, and found a footpath in the brush. The dark man led me by the hand, looked into my eyes and said, smiling:

  “Well, good luck to you. Here, Fediok will conduct you to a good road. Go.”

  “You had better hurry. They might get you.” The dark man bent down, began crawling up the mountain, and Fediok and I went along by the stream.

  “Who is that man?” I asked him.

  “A blacksmith. An exile—for political reasons.”

  “I know such people,” I answered.

  I felt happy, but he was silent. I looked at the young man. His face was round, his nose short. His head seemed cut out from stone, and his gray eyes bulged far apart. He spoke low, walked noiselessly and held his head forward, as if he was listening or was pulled from above by some great force. He kept his hands behind his back, as my father-in-law used to.

  “Are you a native here?”

  “Yes, I am a farm hand at the priest’s.”

  “Where is you cap?”

  He felt his head, looked at me and asked:

  “Why do you care about the cap?”

  “Just so. It is night, and you will be cold.”

  He remained silent. Then he muttered unwillingly:

  “What does it matter about the cap as long as one’s head is saved?”

  The ravine became deeper, the stream sounded clearer, and night rose from the underbrush.

  My soul was unclear, yet I felt happy, and I wished to speak with the young man.

  “Have you only one exile here?” I asked.

  Here the young man opened himself as one opens an overcoat. Slowly and low, he said:

  “Four. There is a nobleman from Moscow and three from the Don. Two of them are quiet fellows. They even drink vodka. But the nobleman and that Ratkof who was here before, speak, though in secret, with whomever they can. They have not yet begun to speak openly before the people. There are many of them here, many around us. I, from Birsky—Fedor Mitkof, am here five years. During this time there were eleven men here. In Olekhine there are eight; in Shishkof there are three.”

  He counted for a long time, and he reached about sixty. When he finished he became thoughtful; then began to speak, gesticulating with his finger.

  “There are even some peasants among them. They all say the same thing; this life is unbearable; it stifles them. I lived in peace until I heard these words, and now I see I am not yet full grown and I must bow my head. Then, in truth, it must be that this life is stifling.”

  The young fellow spoke with difficulty, tearing each word from under his feet. He walked ahead of me and did not look at me. He was broad-shouldered and strong.

  “Can you read and write?” I asked him.

  “I once knew how, but have forgotten. Now I am studying again. It doesn’t matter, I know how. When one has to, one can do everything. And I have to. If it were the noblemen who spoke about the difficulty of this life, I would not take any notice of it, for their beliefs were always different from ours. But when it is your own brothers, the poor working class, then it must be true. And moreover, some of the common people go even farther than the noblemen. That means that something social and human is beginning. That is what they always say—social, human. I am human. Then it means my way lies with them, that is what I think.”

  I listened to him and said to myself: “Learn, Matvei.”

  “What is the use of thinking about such a thing?” I said to him. “It is God’s affair.”

  He stopped, suddenly standing stiff upon the ground, so that I almost fell upon Iris back. Then he turned his face towards me and asked sternly:

  “Is it really God’s affair? Here is what I think about it. This is why they say, 4 Honor your father.’ And they say the authorities are also from God. And this they confirm by miracles. But then if the old laws are changed, new miracles should have come. But where are they? There were no signs when new laws came, none whatever. Everything is as it was. In Nijni they discovered relics which performed miracles. But then a rumor arose that they were not true relics, for Seraphim’s beard was gray and this one was red. The question is not the beard, but the miracle. Were there any miracles? There were, but they don’t want to admit it. They call all signs false, or they say faith creates miracles. There are times when I want to beat them to stop their confounding my soul.”

  Again he stopped, and around him the night rose from the earth. The path fell more steeply, the stream flowed on more hastily, and the brush rustled, moving quietly.

  “Go on, brother,” I said to him, low.

  He went forward. He did not stumble in the darkness but I almost fell on his back every step I took. He seemed to roll down like a stone, and his strange voice resounded in the stillness.

  “If I believed them, it would be an end of everything. I am not especially kind-hearted. I had a brother in the military, and he hanged himself. My sister worked as a servant in a farmer’s house near Birsky, and she gave birth to a child who is lame. It is four years old now and cannot walk. It means that a girl’s life was ruined on account of a man’s caprice. Where should she go now? My father is a drunkard and my elder brother has taken all the land. I have nothing.”

  We turned into the underbrush in the gray darkness. Now the stream went away from us into the depth, now again it flowed at our feet. Over our heads the night birds flew noiselessly, and above them were the stars.

  I wanted to walk fast, but the man in front of me did not hurry and muttered to himself unceasingly, as if he were counting his words, and taking their weight.

  “That dark one, Ratkof, is a good man. He lives according to the new law and takes the part of the oppressed. A policeman once beat me with a club and he immediately felled the policeman to the ground. He had to sit fourteen days for it. ‘How can you fight the authorities?’ I asked him when he came out. He immediately explained his law to me. I went to the priest, and the priest said, ‘Ah, are these the thoughts you are plaiting?’ Ratkof was sent to the prison in the city. He sat three months, and I nineteen days. ‘What did he say?’ they asked me there. ‘Nothing.’ ‘What did he teach?’ ‘He taught nothing.’ I am no fool myself. Ratkof came out. ‘Forgive me,’ I said to him, ‘I was a fool.’ But he laughed. ‘It was nonsense,’ he said.”

  My guide remained silent, and then, in a new voice, and lower, he continued:

  “Everything is nonsense to him. He spits blood, that is nonsense; he starves, that too is nonsense.”

  Suddenly he began to swear grossly, turned about and faced me, and hissed through his teeth:r />
  “I can understand everything. My brother died—that happens in the military. My sister’s case is not a rare one. But why do they torture that man to death? That I cannot understand. I go like a dog wherever he sends me. He calls me Earth. ‘Eh, you Earth,’ he says and laughs. But the fact that they are always torturing him, that is like a knife in my heart!”

  And again he began to swear like a drunken monk.

  The ravine opened, broadened its walls down into the field, leveled them and vanished into the darkness.

  “Well,” said my guide, “good-by.”

  He pointed out to me the road to Omsk, turned back and disappeared. He was still without his cap.

  When his heavy steps died in the stillness I sat down, not desiring to go farther. The night lay heavily on the earth and slept, fresh, and thick, like oil. There were no stars in the heavens, no moon, no light about. But there was warmth and light within me.

  The heavy words of my guide burned within my memory. He was like a bell that had lain a long time on the earth, and had been covered by it and eaten out by rust, and though his tone was dull yet there was a new sound in it.

  The village people stood before my eyes as they listened to my speech seriously and wonderingly. Their troubled faces passed before me as they dragged me away from the police.

  “Is that the way it is?” I thought, marveling, and I could scarcely believe what had happened to me.

  Again I thought. “This young man seeks signs and omens. He himself is a miracle. It is a miracle to preserve love for man in this horrible life. And the crowd who heard me, that, too, was a miracle, that it should not be deaf or blind, though many for a long time have tried to deafen and blind it. And a still greater miracle were Mikhail and his comrades.”

  My thoughts flowed calmly and easily. I was unaccustomed to it and did not expect it. I examined myself carefully, searched my heart quietly, wishing to find there anxiety and troubled doubt.

  I smiled in the silent darkness and feared to move, lest I drive away the unwonted joy which filled my heart to the very brim. I believed and yet did not believe this marvelous fulness of my soul, this unexpected Godsend which I found in me.

  It was as if a white bird, who was born long before, had slept in the shadow of my soul, and I had not known it or felt it. I stroked it accidentally and it awoke and began to sing quietly within me and flutter its light wings in my heart, and its hot song melted the ice of doubt and turned it into grateful tears.

  I wanted to say something, to arise, to sing, to meet human beings and to embrace them. I saw before me the shining face of Juna, the kind eyes of Mikhail, the stern wit of Ivostia. All the familiar, dear and new people became alive to me, united in my breast and broadened it with happiness till it ached.

  So it had happened before while saying Mass at Easter, that I loved people and myself. I sat down, and thought tremblingly:

  “O Lord, is it not Thou, this beauty of beauties, this joy and this happiness?”

  Darkness reigned about me, and in it were the shining faces of the Believers sitting quietly. But my heart sang unceasingly.

  I stroked the earth with my hand, I patted it with my palm, as if it were a horse, which understood my caress.

  I could not sit still. I arose and walked on through the night. I remembered Kostia’s words. I saw before me the look of childish sternness in his eyes, and I Went on, drunk with joy, walking over the earth towards the very end of autumn, gathering up into my soul its precious new gifts.

  At the station in Omsk I saw emigrants, Little Russians. A great part of the earth was covered with their bodies, those friends of labor. I walked among them, heard their soft speech and asked them:

  “Are you not afraid to lose yourselves, so far away?”

  A man gray and bent by work, answered me:

  “As long as we have a piece of land under our feet, we do not care how far it is. It is suffocating on earth when a man has to live by his own labor.”

  Formerly the words of pain and sorrow fell like ashes on my heart, but now they were keen sparks which lit it up, for every sorrow was my sorrow, and I too suffered from the want of liberty, as did the people.

  There is no time nor place for general spiritual growth, and this is bitter and dangerous to the one who outstrips the people, for he remains alone in advance of them, and the people do not see him and cannot strengthen him with their strength; and alone and uselessly he burns himself up in the fire of his desires.

  I spoke in Little Russian, for I knew this tender language.

  “For ages the people have wandered over the earth, hither and thither, seeking a place where they may in freedom build up a righteous life with their own strength, and for ages you have wandered over the earth, its lawful masters, and why? Who is it that gives no room to the people, the real Czar of the earth? Who has dethroned them? Who has torn the crown from their heads and driven them from country to country, these creators of all labor, these exquisite gardeners who planted all the beauty on the earth?”

  The eyes of the people burned. The human soul which was just awakened in them glowed, and my own glance also became wide and keen. I saw the question on each face and immediately answered it; I saw doubt and I fought with it. I drew strength from the hearts which were opened about me, and I united this strength into one heart.

  When you speak to people some word which touches them as a whole, which lies buried secretly and deep in each human soul, then their eyes shine with glowing strength and fill you and carry you above them. But do not think that it is your strength which carries you. You are winged with the crossing of all strength in your heart. It surrounds you from without; you are strong by its strength just as long as the people fill you up with it; but should they go away, should their spirit vanish, you again fall back to the level of all.

  So I began my teaching modestly, calling the people to a new service in the name of a new life, though I did not know how to name my new God. In Zlatout on a holiday I spoke in the square, and again the police interfered, and again the people hid me.

  I met many splendid men and women. One whose name was Yashka Vladikine, a student in a theological seminary, is now a good friend of mine and will remain so for all my life. He does not believe in God, but he loves church music to tears. He plays psalms on the organ and weeps, the dear wonder-child.

  I asked him laughing: “What are you howling at, you heretic, atheist?”

  He cried out, tremblingly: “From joy at the knowledge of the great beauty which some day will be created. If already in this worldly and wretched life beauty has been created with the insignificant strength of individuals, what will be created on earth when the whole spiritual world shall be free and shall begin to express the order of its great spirit in psalms and music?”

  He began to speak about the future, which stood out with blinding clearness to him, and he was himself surprised at his visions.

  I have much to be grateful for to this friend of mine, as much as to Mikhail.

  I have seen marvelous people by tens, for they send me to one another from city to city. I go as with fiery signals, and each one is kept burning by the same faith. It is impossible to enumerate the various people and to describe the joy at seeing the spiritual unity which lies in all. Great is the Russian people and indescribably beautiful is life.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  It was in the government of Kazan that my heart received the last blow, the blow which finished the construction of the temple. It was at the monastery of the Seven Seas, at a procession of the miracle-working ikon of the Holy Virgin. They were expecting the return of this ikon to the monastery from the city—the day was a holiday.

  I stood on a little hill above the lake and gazed about me. The place-was filled with people, and the body of human beings streamed in dark waves to the gates of the monastery, and fought and struggled around its walls. T
he sun was setting and its autumn rays shone with bright red. The bells trembled like birds ready to fly and follow their own songs, and everywhere the bared heads of the people shone red in the rays of the sun, like double poppies.

  Awaiting the miracle, near the gates of the monastery, stood a small carriage, in which lay a young girl, motionless. Her face was set as if in white wax, her gray eyes were half open, and all her life seemed to be in the quiet fluttering of her long lashes.

  Next to her stood her parents. The father was a tall man, gray-bearded and with a long nose. The mother, stout, round-faced, with uplifted eyebrows and wide open eyes, gazed in front of her. Her fingers moved and it seemed to me that she was about to give a piercing and passionate cry.

  The people walked up to them, gazed upon the sick girl’s face, and the father spoke in measured tones, his beard trembling:

  “Orthodox Christians, I beg of you, pray for the unfortunate girl. Without arms, without legs, she has been lying thus for four years. Beg the Holy Virgin for aid. The Lord will reward you for your holy prayers. Help deliver the parents from sorrow.”

  It was plain that he had been carrying his daughter from monastery to monastery for a long time and that he had already lost all hope of her recovery. He poured out these same words over and over again and they sounded dead in his mouth.

  The people listened to his prayers, sighed, crossed themselves, and the lids which covered the sorrowful eyes of the young girl trembled.

  I must have seen about a score of weakened girls, about ten who were supposed to be possessed, and other kinds of invalids, and I was always conscience-stricken and ashamed before them. I pitied the poor bodies robbed of strength and I pitied their vain waiting for a miracle. But I never felt pity to such a degree as now. A great silent complaint seemed frozen on the white half-dead face of the daughter and a silent and indescribable sorrow seemed to control the mother.