The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  He worked artistically. It was a sight worth seeing—how he exercised over a lump of dough weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, rolling it about in the mould, or how, bent over the bin, he kneaded, his mighty arms plunged to the elbows in the springy mass, which squeaked under his fingers of steel.

  At first, when I saw how swiftly he hurled into the oven the raw loaves, which I could hardly toss fast enough from the moulds to his shovel,—I was afraid that he would pile them one on top of the other; but when he had baked three ovenfuls, and not one of the one hundred and twenty loaves—superb, rosy, tall—showed any sign of a “crush,” I understood that I had to deal with an artist in his own line. He loved to work, became absorbed in his business, grew depressed when the oven baked badly, or when the dough rose slowly, waxed angry and reviled the proprietor if the latter bought damp flour, and was as merry and contented as a child if the loaves came out of the oven properly rounded, tall, well-risen, with a moderately rosy hue, and thin, crisp crust. He was accustomed to take the most successful loaf from the shovel into his hand, and tossing it from palm to palm, scorching himself in the operation, laugh gaily, as he said to me:

  “Eh, what a beauty you and I have made.…”

  And I found it pleasant to watch this gigantic child, who put his whole soul into his work, as every man, in every sort of work should do.

  One day I asked him:

  “Sásha, I am told that you sing well?”

  He frowned and dropped his head.

  “I do sing.… Only, I do it by fits and starts in streaks.… When I begin to get sad, I shall begin to sing…And if I begin to sing…I shall begin to grieve. You’d better hold your tongue about that, don’t tease me. Don’t you sing yourself? Akh, you…what a piece you are! You’d…better wait for me…and whistle, in the meanwhile. Then we will both sing together. Is it a bargain?”

  Of course, I assented, and whistled, when I wanted to sing. But sometimes I broke off, and began to hum beneath my breath, as I kneaded the dough, and rolled out the loaves. Konováloff listened to me, moved his lips, and after a while, reminded me of my promise. And sometimes he shouted roughly at me:

  “Drop that! Don’t groan!”

  One day I took a small book out of my trunk, and, propping myself in the window, I began to read.

  Konováloff was dozing, stretched out on the bin with the doughy but the rustle of the leaves, as I turned them over above his ear made him open his eyes.

  “What’s that little book about?”

  It was “The Villagers of Podlípovo.”25

  “Read it aloud, won’t you?” he entreated.

  So I began to read, as I sat on the window-sill, and he sat up on the bin, and leaning his head against my knees, he listened.—From time to time I glanced across the book at his face, and met his eyes—they cling to my memory yet—widely opened, intent, full of profound attention …

  And his mouth, also, was half open, revealing two rows of white, even teeth. His uplifted brows, the curving wrinkles on his lofty forehead, his arms, with which he clasped his knees, his whole motionless, attentive attitude warmed me up, and I endeavored, as intelligibly and as picturesquely as possible, to narrate to him the sad story of Sysóika and Pilá.

  At last I got tired, and closed the book.

  “Is that all?” Konováloff asked me, in a whisper.

  “Less than half.”

  “Will you read it all aloud?”

  “If you like.”

  “Ekh!”—He clasped his head in his hands, and began to rock back and forth, as he sat on the board. He wanted to say something, he opened and shut his mouth, sighing like a pair of bellows, and, for some reason or other, puckering up his eyes. I had not expected this result, and did not understand its meaning.

  “How you read that!”—he began in a whisper.—“In different voices…How alive they all are. Apróska! She fairly squeals! Pilá…what fools! It made me feel ridiculous to hear that…but I restrained myself. What comes next? Where are they going? Lord God! How true to nature it is! Why, they are just like real people…the most genuine sort of peasants.… And exactly as though they were alive, and their voices, and their faces.… Listen, Maxím! Let’s put the bread in the oven, and then you go on reading!” We put the bread in the oven, prepared another batch of loaves, and for another hour and forty minutes I continued to read the book. Then there was another pause—the bread was done, we took out the loaves, put in others, mixed some more dough, set some more to rise…and all this was done with feverish haste, and almost in silence.

  Konováloff, with brows knitted in a frown, flung rare and monosyllabic orders at me, and hurried, hurried …

  Toward morning, we had finished the book, and I felt as though my tongue had turned to wood.

  Seated astride of a sack of flour, Konováloff stared me straight in the face with strange eyes, and maintained silence, with his arms propped on his knees.

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  He shook his head, puckered up his eyes, and again—for some reason in a whisper—began:

  “Who wrote that?”—In his eyes gleamed amazement not to be expressed in words, and his face suddenly flushed with ardent feeling.

  I told him who had written the book.

  “Well—he’s a man, that he is! How he grasped them! Didn’t he? It’s downright terrible. It grips your heart, that is, it nips your soul—it’s so full of life. Well, now, what about him, that writer, what happened to him for that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for example, did they give him a reward or anything there?”

  “But what did they need to reward him for?” I inquired, with crafty intent.

  “For what? The book…in the nature of a police document. As soon as they read it…they consider: Pilá, Sysóika…what sort of folks were they? Everybody feels sorry for them.… They’re unenlightened, innocent folks…What a life they had! Well, and.…”

  Konováloff looked at me in confusion, and timidly asserted:

  “Some sort of orders ought to be given about that. Surely, they are human beings, and they ought to be supported.”

  In reply to this, I delivered a whole lecture to him…But, alas! it did not produce the effect on which I had reckoned.

  Konováloff fell into meditation, drooped his head, rocked his whole body about, and began to sigh, not interfering with a single word in my attempt to play the part of a professor. I got tired, at last, and paused.

  Konováloff raised his head and gazed sorrowfully at me.

  “And so they did not give him anything?” he inquired.

  “Whom?” I asked, having entirely forgotten Ryeshétnikoff.

  “The author?”

  I was vexed. I made no reply, conscious that this vexation was begetting in me irritation toward my peculiar audience, which, evidently, did not regard himself as competent to settle world-problems, and was inclined to interest himself in the fate of a man rather than in the fates of humanity.

  Konováloff, without waiting for my answer, took the book in his hands, carefully turned it over, opened it, shut it, and putting it back in its place, heaved a deep sigh.

  “How wonderful it all is, oh Lord!” he said, in an undertone .… “A man has written a book?… just paper and a few little dots, that’s all.… He wrote it…and…is he dead?”

  “Yes,” I answered curtly.

  At that time, I could not endure philosophy, and still less metaphysics; but Konováloff, without inquiring as to my tastes, went on:

  “He is dead, but the book remains, and people read it. A man looks at it with his eyes, and utters various words. And you listen, and understand: folks have lived in the world—Pilá, and Sysóika and Apróska.… And you feel sorry for those folks, although you never have seen them, and they are nothing whatever to you! There may be thousands of live folk
s just like them walking along the street, and you see them, but you don’t know anything about them…and you care nothing about them…they walk on, and on.… But in the book there are none of them…still, you are so sorry for them that your very heart aches.… How can a man understand that?—and so the author got no reward, and is dead? Nothing happened to him?”

  I fairly exploded with rage. I told him all about the rewards of authors.…

  Konováloff listened to me, his eyes starting from their sockets with amazement, as he smacked his lips with compassion.

  “A pretty state of things!” he sighed, from a full breast, and gnawing his left mustache, he hung his head with sorrow.

  Then I began to talk about the fatal influence of the dram-shop on the life of the Russian literary man, about the great and genuine talents which had gone to perdition through vódka—the only consolation of their hard-working lives.

  “But is it possible that such men drink?” Konováloff asked me, in a whisper. Distrust of me, together with terror, and pity for these people flashed in his widely-opened eyes.—“They drink! How can they…after they have written books, take to drink?”

  In my opinion, this was an irrelevant question, and I made no reply to it.

  “Of course, they do it afterwards,.…” Konováloff settled the point.—“Men live and watch life, and suck in the bitterness of others’ lives. They must have eyes of a special sort. And hearts, also.… They gaze at life, and grow sad.… And they pour out their grief in their books—.… But this does them no good because their hearts are touched—and you can’t burn grief out of that even with fire…all that is left for them to do, is to extinguish it with vódka. Well, and so they drink.… Have I got that right?”

  I agreed with him, and this seemed to give him courage.

  “Well, and in all justice,”—he continued, to develop the psychology of authors,—“they ought to be distinguished for that. Isn’t that so? Because they understand more than others, and point out divers disorders to others. Now take me, for instance, what am I? A barefooted, naked tramp…a drunkard and a crack-brained fellow. There is no justification for my life. Why do I live on the earth, and to whom on earth is my life of any use, if you stop to consider it? I have no home of my own, no wife, no children—and I don’t even feel the want of any. I live and grieve.… What about? I don’t know. It’s somewhat as though my mother had brought me into the world without something which all other people possess…something which is more necessary than anything else to a man. I have no inward guide to my path…do you understand? How shall I express it? I haven’t got the right sort of spark…or force, or whatever it is, in my soul. Well, some piece or other has been left out of me—and that’s all there is to it! You understand? So I live along, and search for that missing piece, and ‘grieve for it, but what it is—is more than I know myself.…”

  “Why do you say this?” I asked.

  He gazed at me, holding his hand to his head the while, and a powerful effort was written on his face—the labor of a thought which is seeking for itself a form.

  “Why? Because—of the disorder of life.… That is to say…here am I living on, we’ll say, and there’s no place for me to go…nothing that I can hang on to…and such a life is confusion.”

  “Well, and what comes next?” I pursued my inquiries as to the connection between him and authors, which was incomprehensible to me.

  “What next?… That’s what I can’t tell you.… But this is what I think, that if some writer would cast an eye on me, then…he might be able to explain my life to me…couldn’t he? What do you think about it?”

  I thought I was capable myself of explaining his life to him, and immediately set about this task, which, in my opinion, was easy and clear. I began to discourse about conditions and surroundings, about inequality in general, about people who are the victims of life, and people who are life’s priests.

  Konováloff listened attentively. He sat opposite me, with his cheek resting on his hand, and his large blue eyes widely opened, thoughtful and intelligent, gradually clouded over, as with a thin mist, while the folds lay more sharply across his forehead, and he seemed to be holding his breath, all absorbed as he was in his desire to comprehend my remarks.

  All this was very flattering to me. With fervor I depicted to him his life, and demonstrated to him, that he was not to blame for being what he was; that is to say, that he, as a fact, was perfectly logical and quite regularly founded on a long series of premises from the distant past. He was the mournful victim of conditions, a being equal in rights with all men, by his very nature, and reduced by a long line of historical injustices to the degree of a social cipher. I wound up my explanation with the remark, which I had already made several times:

  “You have nothing to blame yourself for.… You have been wronged.…”

  He maintained silence, never taking his eyes from me; I beheld a brilliant, kindly smile dawn in them, and waited, with impatience, to see how he would reply to my speech.

  The smile played over his lips, now he laughed affectionately, and reaching toward me with a soft, feminine movement, he laid his hand on my shoulder.

  “How easily you talk about all that, brother! Only, whence comes your knowledge of all these matters? Is it all from books? But you have read a great lot of them, evidently—of books! Ekh, if I could only read as many! But the chief point is—that you speak very compassionately. This is the first time I have ever heard such a speech. It’s wonderful! Everybody accuses his neighbor of his bad luck, but you accuse life, the whole order of things.

  “According to you it appears that a man is not to blame, himself, for anything whatever, but it is written in his fate that he is to be a tramp—well, and so he is a tramp, and it’s very queer about prisoners, too: they steal because they have no work, but must eat.… How pitiful all that is, according to your showing! You have a weak heart, evidently!”

  “Wait a bit!”—said I, “do you agree with me? Have I spoken truly?”

  “You know best whether it is true or not—you can read and write.… It is true, I suppose, if you apply it to others.… But as for me.…”

  “What then?”

  “Well, I’m a special article.… Who’s to blame if I drink? Pávelka, my brother, doesn’t drink,—he has a bakery of his own in Perm. But here am I—I’m as good a workman as he is—but I’m a vagrant and a drunkard, and I have no longer any standing or position in life…Yet we are the children of one mother. He is younger than I am. So it would appear that there is something wrong about me.… That means, that I was not born as a man should be born. You say yourself, that all men are equals: a man is born, he lives out his appointed time, then he dies! But I’m on a separate path.… And I’m not the only one—there are a lot of us like that. We must be peculiar people, and don’t fit into any rule. We need a special account…and special laws…very strict laws,—to exterminate us out of life! For we are of no use, and we take up room in it, and stand in the way of other folks.… Who is to blame for us?—We are, ourselves—before ourselves and before life.… Because we have no desire to live, and we have no feeling toward ourselves.… Our mothers begot us in an unlucky hour—that’s where the trouble lies.…”

  I was overwhelmed by this unexpected confutation of my deductions.… He—that big man with the clear eyes of a child—set himself apart from life in the ranks of the men who are useless in it, and therefore subject to extermination, with so light a spirit, with such laughing sadness, that I was positively stunned by his self-abasement, which I had never, up to that moment, beheld in any member of the barefoot brigade, who, as a whole, are beings torn loose from everything, hostile to everything, and ready to try the force of their exasperated scepticism on everyone.… I had encountered only men who threw the blame on everything and complained of everything, persistently thrusting themselves aside from the series of obvious facts which obstinately confu
ted their personal infallibility, and who always cast the responsibility of their bad luck on taciturn Fate, on wicked people.… Konováloff did not blame Fate, and uttered not one word about people. He alone was to blame for all the disorder of his individual life, and the more persistently I endeavored to prove to him that he was “the victim of circumstances and conditions,” the more persistently did he argue with me as to his own guilt toward himself and toward life for his mournful lot.… This was original, and it enraged me. But he experienced satisfaction in scourging himself; it was with satisfaction and nothing else that his eyes beamed, when he shouted at me, in a ringing baritone voice:

  “Every man is the master of himself, and no one is to blame if I am a scoundrel!”

  In the mouth of an educated man, such remarks would not have surprised me, for there is no ulcer which cannot be found in the tangled and complicated psychical organism called “the intelligent man.” But from the lips of a tramp, although he was an intelligent man, amid the scorned of fate, the naked, hungry and vicious creatures half men, half beasts, who fill the filthy dens of the towns,—from the lips of a tramp it was strange to hear these remarks. I was forced to the conclusion that Konováloff really was—a special article,—but I did not wish to admit it.

  From the inner point of view, Konováloff was a typical representative, down to the most petty detail, of the “golden horde”:26 but, alas! the longer I inspected him, the more convinced did I become that I had to deal with a variety which infringed upon my idea as to people who ought, long ago, to have been accounted a class, and who thoroughly merit attention, as hungering and thirsting in a powerful degree, as very malicious and far from stupid.…

  Our dispute waxed hotter and hotter.

  “But just wait,” I shouted; “how can a man stand steady on his feet if divers obscure powers press upon him from all sides?”

  “Lean the harder!” cried my opponent loudly, growing warm, and flashing his eyes.