by Maxim Gorky
* * * *
They had got into the habit of drinking tea together. On the morning after their talk in the fields, Orlóff presented himself in his wife’s room confused and surly over something. Felitzáta was not feeling well, Matréna was alone in the room, and greeted her husband with a beaming face, which immediately clouded over, and she asked him anxiously:
“What makes you like that? Are you ill?”
“No, never mind,”—he replied curtly, as he seated himself on a chair, and drew toward him the tea which she had already poured out.
“But what is it?” persisted Matréna.
“I didn’t sleep. I kept thinking.… You and I cackled together pretty hard last night, and got silly-soft…and now I’m ashamed of myself.… There’s no use in that. You women always try to get a man into your hands, on such occasions…so you do.… Only, don’t you dream of such a thing—you won’t succeed.…. You can’t get around me, and I won’t yield to you.… So now you know it!”
He said all this very impressively, but did not look at his wife. Matréna never took her eyes from his face all the time, and her lips writhed strangely.
“Are you sorry that you came so near to me last night—is that it?”—she asked quietly.—“Are you sorry that you kissed and caressed me? What does this mean? It insults me to hear it…it is very bitter, you’re breaking my heart with such speeches. What do you want? Do you find me tiresome, am not I dear to you, or what?”
She gazed at him suspiciously, but in her tone resounded pain and a challenge to her husband.
“N—no.…” said Grigóry abashed, “I was only talking in general…You and I used to live in a hole, you know yourself what sort of a life it was! It makes me sick even to think of it. And now that we’ve got out of it—I feel afraid of something. Everything changed so suddenly.… I’m like a stranger to myself, and you seem to be a different person too. What is the meaning of this! And what will come next?”
“What God sends, Grísha!”—said Matréna gravely.—“Only don’t feel sorry that you were kind last night.”
“All right, drop it.…” Grigóry stopped her as abashed as ever, and still sighing.—“You see, I’m thinking that we shan’t come to anything, after all. And our former life was not flowery, and my present life is not to my taste. And although I don’t drink, don’t beat you, and don’t swear.…”
Matréna laughed convulsively.
“You have no time to worry about that now.”
“I could always find time to get drunk,”—smiled Orlóff. “I don’t feel tempted to—: that’s the wonder. And besides, in general, I feel…not exactly ashamed of it, and yet not exactly afraid of it.. he shook his head, and began to meditate.
“The Lord only knows what is the matter with you,” said Matréna, with a heavy sigh.—“It’s a pleasant life, though there’s a lot of work; all the doctors are fond of you, and you are behaving well…really, I don’t know what to make of it. You’re very uneasy.”
“That’s true, I’m uneasy.… Now, I was thinking in the night: Piótr Ivánovitch says: all men are equals, and ain’t I a man like the rest? Yet Doctor Véshtchenko is better than I am, and Piótr Ivánovitch is better, and so are many others.… That means, that they are not my equals…and I’m not on a level with them, I feel that.… They cured Míshka Úsoff, and rejoiced at it.… And I don’t understand that. On the whole, why feel glad that a man has recovered? His life was worse than the cholera convulsions, if you speak the truth. They understand that, but they are glad.… And I would have liked to rejoice too, like them, only I can’t.… Because—as I said before…what is there to be glad about?”
“But they pity the people,”—returned Matréna,—“okh, how they pity them! It’s the same thing in our section…a sick woman begins to mend, and, oh, Lord, what goings on! And when a poor woman gets her discharge, they give her advice, and money and medicines.…It even makes me shed tears…the kind people, the compassionate people!”
“Now you say—tears.… But I’m seized with amazement…Nothing less.…” Orlóff shrugged his shoulders, and rubbed his head, and stared in wonder at his wife.
Eloquence made its appearance in her, from somewhere, and she began zealously to demonstrate to her husband, that people are entirely worthy of compassion. Bending toward him, and gazing into his face with affectionate eyes, she talked long to him about people, and the burden of life, and he stared at her and thought:
“Eh, how she talks! Where does she get the words?”
“For you are compassionate yourself—you say, you would strangle the cholera, if you had the power. But what for? Whom does it annoy? People, not you: you have even begun to live better because it made its appearance.”
Orlóff suddenly burst out laughing.
“Why, that’s so, certainly!—I am better off, that’s true, isn’t it? Akh, you shrewd creature,—make the most of it! People die, and I live better in consequence, hey?—That’s what life is like! Pshaw!”
He rose, and went away, laughing, to his duty. As he was walking along the corridor, he suddenly felt regret that no one except himself had heard Matréna’s speech. “She spoke cleverly! A woman, a woman, and yet she understands something, too.” And absorbed in an agreeable sort of sensation, he entered his ward, greeted by the hoarse rattling and the moans of the sick men.
With every passing day, the world of his feelings grew wider and wider, and, along with this, his necessity for speech waxed greater. He could not, of course, narrate as a whole what was taking place within him, for the greater part of his sensations and thought were beyond his grasp. An angry envy blazed up within him, because he could not rejoice over people.
It was after this that the desire was kindled within him to perform some wonderful deed, and astonish everyone thereby. He felt conscious that his position in the barracks placed him between people, as it were: the doctors and students were higher than he, the servitors were lower,—what was he himself? And a sense of loneliness laid its grasp upon him; then it seemed to him that Fate was playing with him, had blown him out of his place, and was now carrying him through the air like a feather. He began to feel sorry for himself, and went to his wife. Sometimes he did not wish to do this, considering that frankness toward her would lower him in her eyes, but he went, nevertheless. He arrived gloomy, and now in a vicious, again in a sceptical mood, he went away, almost always, petted and composed. His wife had words of her own; they were not many, they were simple, but there was always a great deal of feeling in them, and he observed, with astonishment, that Matréna was coming to occupy a larger and larger place in his life, that he had to think of her and talk with her “according to the soul,” more and more frequently.
She in her turn understood this very well, indeed, and endeavored, in every way, to broaden her growing significance in his life. Her toilsome and energetic life in the barracks had increased her sense of her own value greatly,—it came to pass unnoticed by Matréna. She did not think, she did not reason, but when she recalled her former life, in the cellar, in the narrow circle of cares for her husband and her housekeeping, she involuntarily compared the past with the present, and the gloomy picture of the cellar-existence gradually retreated further and further from her. The authorities at the barracks liked her; because of her intelligence, and knowledge of how to work, they all treated her graciously, they all saw in her an individual; and this was new for her, it gave her animation.
One day when she was on night-duty, the fat woman-doctor began to question her about her life, and Matréna, as she was willingly and frankly telling her about her life, suddenly paused and smiled.
“What are you laughing at?” asked the doctor.
“Why nothing.… I lived very badly…and, you see, if you will believe it, my dear madam,—I did not understand it…up to this very moment, I never understood how badly.”
After this glance into
the past, a strange feeling took form in Mrs. Orlóff’s breast toward her husband, she loved him exactly as much as before—with the blind love of the female, but it began to seem to her as though Grigóry were her debtor. At times, when she was talking with him, she assumed a patronizing tone, for he often inspired her with pity by his uneasy speeches. But, nevertheless, she was sometimes seized with doubt as to the possibility of a quiet and peaceful life with her husband, although, on the whole, she still believed that Grigóry would become steady, and that this melancholy would be extinguished in him.
They were fatally bound to grow nearer to each other, and—both were young, fit for work, strong—they might have gone on and lived out their days in the gray life of half-fed poverty, a life of exploiting others, to the end completely absorbed in the pursuit of the kopék, but they had been saved from this end by what Gríshka called his “uneasiness in the heart,” and was, in its essence, unable to reconcile itself with every-day things.
On the morning of a gloomy September day a wagon drove into the court-yard of the barracks, and Prónin took out of it a little boy, all streaked with paints, bony, yellow, hardly breathing.
“From the Petúnnikoff house, in Damp street, again,” the driver reported, in answer to the query, whence the patient came.
“Tchízhik!” exclaimed Orlóff, in distress,—“akh, oh, Lord! Sénka! Tchizh!16 Do you know me?”
“Y—yes, I know you.…” said Tchízhik, with an effort, as he lay on the stretcher, and slowly rolled his eyes up under his brow, in order to see Orlóff, who was walking at his head, and bending over him.
“Akh…what a merry bird you were! How did you come to give up?”—asked Orlóff. He was, somehow, strangely alarmed at the sight of that dirty little boy, in the throes of the disease.—“Why did it seize on this poor little boy?” he embodied in one question all his sensations, and sadly shook his head.
Tchízhik made no reply, and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m cold,” said he, when they laid him on a cot, and began to remove his rags, streaked all over with every sort of paint-color.
“Now, we’re going to put you into hot water immediately …” promised Orlóff.—“And we’ll cure you.”
Tchízhik shook his little head, and whispered:
“You can’t cure me.… Uncle Grigóry…bend down your…ear. I stole the accordeon.… It’s in the wood-shed…Day before yesterday I touched it, for the first time since I stole it. Akh, what an accordeon it is! I hid it…and then my belly began to ache.… So.… That means, that this is for my sin.… It’s hanging on the wall, under the stairs…and I piled wood up over it.… So.… Uncle Grigóry…give it.… The accordeon-player had a sister.… She asked about it.… Gi-ive it…to…her!…” He began to groan, and to writhe in convulsions.
They did everything they could for him, but the gaunt, exhausted little body would not retain life in it, and in the evening, Orlóff carried him on the stretcher to the dead-house. As he carried him, he felt exactly as though he had been wronged.
In the dead-house, Orlóff tried to straighten out Tchízhik’s body, but he did not succeed. Orlóff went away overwhelmed, mournful, bearing with him the image of the merry lad distorted with the disease.
He was seized with a debilitating consciousness of his powerlessness in the face of death, and his ignorance of it. Despite all the pains he had taken over Tchízhik, despite the zealous labors of the doctors…the boy had died! This was outrageous.… It would seize upon him, Orlóff, one of these days, and twist him up in convulsions.… And that would be the end of him. He grew frightened, and, along with this feeling, he was invaded by a sense of loneliness. He wanted to discuss all this with some clever man. More than once, he tried to strike up a comprehensive conversation with one or another of the students, but no one had any time for philosophy, and Grigóry’s attempts were not crowned with success. He was obliged to go to his wife, and talk with her. So he went to her, morose and sad.
She had only just come off duty, and was washing herself self in the corner of the room, but the samovár was already standing on the table, filling the air with steam and hissing.
Grigóry seated himself, in silence, at the table, and began to gaze at his wife’s bare, plump shoulders. The samovár bubbled away, splashing water over; Matréna snorted; orderlies ran swiftly back and forth along the corridor, and Grigóry tried to determine, from the walk, who was passing.
All of a sudden, it seemed to him, as though Matréna’s shoulders were as cold, and covered with the same sort of sticky sweat as Tchízhik, when the latter was writhing with convulsions on the hospital cot. He shuddered, and said, in a dull voice:
“Sénka is dead.…”
“Dead? The kingdom of heaven to the child Sénka, newly-appeared before God!”17 said Matréna prayerfully, and then she began to spit fiercely—some of the soap had got into her mouth.
“I’m sorry for him,” sighed Grigóry.
“He was a dreadful tease.”
“He’s dead, and that ends it! It’s no business of yours now, what sort of a fellow he was!… But it’s a pity he died. He was bold and lively.… The accordeon…Hm!… He was a clever lad.… I sometimes used to look at him and think: I’ll take him as an apprentice, or something of that sort.… He was an orphan…he would have got used to us, and have taken the place of a son to us.… For, you see, we have no children.… No.… You’re so healthy, yet you don’t bear any children.… You had one, and that was the end of it. Ekh, you woman! If we had some squalling little brats, you’d see we shouldn’t find life so tiresome.… But now it’s only live on, and work.… And for what? To feed myself and you.… And of what use are we…of what use is food to us? In order that we may work.… So it turns out to be a senseless circle.… But if we had children—that would be quite another matter.… That it would.”
He said this in a sad, dissatisfied tone, with his head drooping low. Matréna stood before him and listened, gradually turning pale, as he continued:
“I’m healthy, you’re healthy, and still we have no children.… What’s the meaning of it? Why? Ye-es…a man thinks and thinks about it…and then he takes to drink!”
“You lie!” said Matréna firmly and loudly.—“You lie! Don’t you dare to utter your dastardly words to me…do you hear? Don’t you dare! You drink—because you choose to, out of self-indulgence, because you have no self-control, and my childlessness has nothing whatever to do with the matter; you lie, Gríshka!”
Grigóry was stunned. He flung himself back, against the back of his chair, cast a glance at his wife, and did not recognize her. Never before had he beheld her so infuriated, never had she looked at him with such mercilessly-angry eyes, or spoken with such power in her words.
“Come now, come!”—ejaculated Grigóry defiantly, clutching the seat of his chair with his hands.—“Come now, talk some more!”
“And so I will! I wouldn’t have spoken, only that reproach from you I cannot endure! I don’t bear you children, don’t I? And I won’t! I can’t any more.… I can’t have any children!…” a sob was audible in her shriek.
“Don’t yell,” her husband warned her.
“Why don’t I bear children, hey? Come now, recall to your mind, Grísha, how much have you beaten me? How many kicks in the side have you showered on me?… reckon them up, do! How you have tortured, racked me? Do you know how much blood flowed from me after your tortures? My chemise used to be bloody clear up to my neck! And that’s why I bear no children, my dear husband! How can you reproach me for that, hey? How is it that your ugly phiz isn’t ashamed to look me in the face?…For you are a murderer! you have killed your children, killed them yourself! and now you reproach me because I don’t bear any.… I have endured everything from you, I have forgiven you for everything,—but those words I will never forgive, to all eternity! When I am dying,—I’ll call that to mind! Don’t you understand that
you are to blame yourself, that you have destroyed me? Ain’t I like all women—don’t I want children? Do you think I don’t want them? Many a night, when I couldn’t sleep, I have prayed to the Lord God that He would preserve the children in my body from you, you murderer!…When I see a strange child—I choke with bitterness, out of envy and pity for myself.… I’d like!…Queen of Heaven!… I used to pet that Sénka on the sly.… What am I? O Lord! A barren woman.…”
She began to sob. The words leaped from her mouth without sense of coherence.
Her face was spotted all over, she trembled, and scratched her neck, because the sobs gurgled in her throat. Keeping a stout grasp on his chair, Grigóry, pale and crushed, sat opposite her, and with widely-opened eyes stared at this woman, who was a stranger to him, and he was afraid of her…afraid that she would clutch him by the throat and strangle him. Precisely that was what her terrible eyes, blazing with wrath, promised him. She was twice as strong as he now, and he felt it, and turned cowardly; he could not rise and strike her, as he would have done, had he not understood that she had undergone a transformation, as though she had imbibed vast strength from some source.
“You have stung my very soul, Gríshka! Great is your sin toward me! I have endured, I have held my peace…because…I love you…but your reproaches I cannot bear!… My strength is exhausted.… You heaven-sent husband of mine! For those words of yours, may you be thrice accur.…”
“Hold your tongue!—” thundered Gríshka, with a snarl. “You’re outrageous! Have you forgotten where we are? You accursed devil!”
There was a mist over Grigóry’s eyes. He could not discern who it was that was standing in the door-way, and talking in a bass voice; he swore in vile language, thrust the man aside, and rushed out into the fields. And Matréna, after standing still in the middle of the room for a minute, reeling and as though struck with blindness, with her hands outstretched before her, went to the cot, and fell upon it, with a groan.
