by Maxim Gorky
Thereafter these discussions filled their whole life, every meeting was a continuation of the one same endless, passionate theme, and every day the stubborn strength of their beliefs became more and more evident.
For him life was a struggle for the widening of knowledge, for the conquest of the forces of Nature, a struggle for the subjugation of mysterious energies to the will of man. It was meet that everybody should be equally armed for this struggle, which was to issue in Freedom and the triumph of Reason—the most powerful of all forces, and the only force in the world which acts consciously. For her life was a slow and painful sacrifice of man to the Unknown, the subjugation of Reason to that will the laws and aims of which are known to the priest only.
Nonplussed by this, he inquired:
“Why do you attend my lectures and what do you expect from socialism?”
“Yes, I know that I sin and contradict myself!” she confessed sorrowfully.
“But it is pleasant to listen to you and to dream about the possibility of happiness for all!”
Though not specially pretty she was slim and graceful, with an intelligent face, and large eyes, whose glance could be mild or angry, gentle or severe. She worked in a silk factory, lived with her old mother, her one-legged father and a younger sister who was attending a technical school. Sometimes she was happy, not boisterously, but quietly happy; she was fond of museums and old churches, grew enthusiastic over pictures and the beauty of which they were the token, and looking at them would say:
“How strange it is to think that these things have been hidden in private houses and that but one person had the right to enjoy them! Everybody must see the beautiful, for only then does it live!”
She often spoke in so strange a manner that it seemed to him that her words came from some dark crevice in her soul; they reminded him of the groans of a wounded man. He felt that this girl loved life and mankind with that deep mother love which is full of anxiety and compassion; he waited patiently till his faith should kindle her heart and this quiet love change to passion. The girl appeared to him to listen more attentively to his speeches and, in her heart, to be in agreement with him. And he spoke more passionately of the need for an incessant, active struggle for the emancipation of man, of the nation, of humanity as a whole, from the old chains, the rust of which had eaten into their souls, and was blighting and poisoning them.
Once, while accompanying her home, he told her that he loved her, and that he wanted her to be his wife. He was startled at the effect his words had on her: she reeled as though she had been struck, stared with wide-open eyes and turned pale; she leaned against the wall, and said, clasping her hands and looking, almost terrified, into his face:
“I was beginning to fear that that might be so; almost I felt it, because I loved you long ago. But, O God! what is going to happen now?”
“Days of your happiness and mine will begin, days of mutual work,” he exclaimed.
“No,” said the girl, her head drooping. “No; we should not have talked about love.”
“Why?’
“Will you be married according to the laws of the Church?” she asked quietly.
“No!”
“Then, good-bye!”
And she walked quickly away from him.
He overtook her, tried to persuade her; she heard him out in silence and then said:
“I, my mother and my father are all believers, and will die believers. Marriage at the registrar’s is no marriage for me; if children are born of such a marriage I know they will be unhappy. Love is consecrated only by marriage in a church, which alone can give happiness and peace.”
It seemed to him that soon she would yield; he, of course, could not give in. They parted. As she bade him good-bye the girl said:
“Let us not torment each other, don’t seek meetings with me. Oh, if only you would go away from here! I cannot, I am so poor.”
“I will make no promises,” he replied.
The struggle between two strong natures began: they met, of course, and even more often than before; they met because they loved each other, sought meetings in the hope that one or other of them would be unable to stand the torments of an ungratified longing which was becoming more and more intense. Their meetings were full of anguish and despair; after each one he felt quite worn out and exhausted; she, all in tears, went to confess to a priest. He knew this and it seemed to him that the black wall of people in tonsures became stronger, higher and more insurmountable every day, that it grew and parted them till death.
Once, on a holiday, while walking with her through a field outside the town, he said, not threateningly, but more as if to himself:
“Do you know, it seems to me sometimes that I could kill you.”
She remained silent.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Looking at him affectionately she answered:
“Yes.”
And he understood that she would rather die than give in to him. Before this “yes” he had embraced and kissed her sometimes; she struggled with him, but her resistance was becoming feebler, and he cherished the hope that some day she would yield, and that then her woman’s instinct would help him to conquer. But now he understood that that would not be victory, but enslavement, and from that day on he ceased to appeal to the woman in her.
So he wandered with her in the dark circle of her life’s horizon, lit all the beacons before her that he could; but she listened to him with the dreamy smile of the blind, saw nothing, believed him not.
Once she said:
“I understand sometimes that all you say is possible, but I think that is because I love you! I understand, but I do not believe, I cannot believe! As soon as you go away all that is of you goes away too.”
This drama lasted nearly two years, and then the girl’s health broke down: she became seriously ill. He gave up his employment, ceased to attend to the work of his organisation, got into debt. Avoiding his comrades, he spent his time wandering round her lodgings; or sat at her bedside, watching her wasting from disease and becoming more transparent every day, noting how the fire of fever glowed more and more brightly in her eyes.
“Speak to me of life, of the future,” she asked him.
But he spoke of the present, enumerating vindictively everything that crushes us, all those things against which he was vowed to a lifelong struggle; he spoke of things that ought to be cast out of mens lives, as one discards soiled and worn-out rags.
She listened until the pain it gave her became unbearable; then touched his hand, and stopped him with an imploring look.
“I, am I dying?” she asked him once, many days after the doctor had told him that she was in a galloping consumption and that her condition was hopeless.
He bowed his head but did not answer.
“I know that I shall die soon,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
And, taking his outstretched hand, she pressed it to her burning lips and said:
“Forgive me, I have done you wrong. It was all a mistake—and I have worn you out. Now when I am struck down I see that my faith was only fear before what I could not understand, notwithstanding my desire and my efforts. It was fear, but it was in my blood, I was born with it. I have my own mind—or yours—but somebody else’s heart; you are right, I understand it now, but my heart could not agree with you.”
A few days later she died; he turned grey during her agony; he was only twenty-seven.
Not long ago he married the only friend of that girl, his pupil. It is they who go to the cemetery, to her—they go there every Sunday and place flowers on her grave.
He does not believe in his victory, he is convinced that when she said to him: “You are right,” she lied to him in order to console him. His wife thinks the same; they both lovingly revere her memory. This sad episode of a good woman who perished gives them strength by
filling them with a desire to avenge her; it gives their mutual work a strangely fascinating character, and renders them untiring in their efforts.
*
The river of gaily dressed people streams on in the sunshine; a merry noise accompanies its flow: children shout and laugh. Not everyone is gay and joyful; there are many hearts, no doubt, oppressed by dark sorrow, many minds tormented by contradictions; but we all go steadily forward. And “Freedom, Freedom is our goal!”
And the more vigour we put into it the faster we shall advance!
THE TRAITOR’S MOTHER
Many are the tales that may be told about mothers.
For several weeks now the town had been surrounded by a close ring of armed foes. Of nights bonfires were lit and a multitude of fiery red eyes looked out from the darkness upon the walls. They glowed ominously, these fires, as if warning the inhabitants of the town. And the thoughts they conjured up were of a gloomy kind.
From the walls it was apparent that the noose of foes was being drawn tighter and tighter. Black shadows could be seen moving this way and that about the fires. The neighing of well-fed horses could be heard, and the clatter of arms and the loud laughter and merry songs of men confident of victory—and what is more painful to listen to than the laughter and songs of the foe?
The enemy had filled with corpses the streams which supplied the town with water; they had burned down the vineyards around the town, trampled down the fields, and cut down the trees of the neighbourhood, leaving the town exposed on all sides; and almost every day missiles of iron and lead were poured into it by the guns and rifles of the foe.
Detachments of half-starved soldiers, tired out by skirmishes, passed along the narrow streets of the town; from the windows of the houses come the groans of wounded, the raving of men in delirium, the prayers of women and the crying of children. Everybody spoke quietly, in subdued tones, interrupting one another’s speech in the middle of a word to listen intently to detect whether the foe was not commencing to storm the town.
Life became especially unbearable in the evening, when the groans and cries became louder and more noticeable in the stillness, when blue-black shadows crept from the far-off mountain gorges, hiding the enemy’s camp and moving towards the half-shattered walls, and, over the black summits of the mountains, the moon appeared, like a lost shield battered by the blows of heavy swords.
Expecting no assistance from without, spent with toil and hunger, and losing hope more and more every day, the people looked fearfully at the moon, at the sharp crests and the black gorges of the mountains, at the noisy camp of the enemy—everything spoke to them of death and no single star twinkled solace to them.
They were afraid to light lamps in the houses; a thick fog enveloped the streets, and in this fog, like a fish at the bottom of a river, a woman flitted silently to and fro, wrapped from head to foot in a black mantle.
People, noticing her, asked one another:
“Is it she?”
“Yes!”
And they drew back into the recesses of the doorways or, lowering their heads, ran past her silently. The men in charge of the patrols warned her sternly:
“You are in the street again, Monna Marianna? Have a care! They may kill you and no one will trouble to search for the culprit.”
She stood erect and waited, but the patrol passed her by, either hesitating or not wishing to harm her. Armed men walked round her as if she had been a corpse. Yet she lingered on in the darkness, moving slowly from street to street, solitary, silent and black, seeming the personification of the town’s misfortunes. And around her, mournfully pursuing her, surged depressing sounds: groans, sobs, prayers, and the grim talk of soldiers who had lost all hope of victory.
She was a citizen and a mother, and her thoughts were of her son and of the town of her birth. And her son, a handsome but gay and heartless youth, was at the head of the men who were destroying the town. Not long ago she had looked at him with pride, as upon her precious gift to the fatherland, as upon a beneficent force created by her for the welfare of the town, her birthplace, and the place also where she had borne and brought up her son. Hundreds of indissoluble ties bound her heart to the ancient stones, out of which her ancestors had built the houses and the city walls; to the soil in which lay the bones of her kindred; to the legends, songs and hopes of her native people. And this heart now had lost him whom it had loved most and it was rent in twain; it was like a balance in which her love for her son was being weighed against her love for the town. And it was not possible yet to decide which love outweighed the other.
In this state of mind she walked the streets at night, and many, not recognising her, were frightened, thinking that the dark figure was the personification of Death which was so near to them all; those that recognised her stepped hurriedly out of her way to avoid the traitor’s mother.
Once, in a deserted corner of the city wall, she came across another woman: she was kneeling by the side of a corpse, and praying with face uplifted to the stars; on the wall, above her head, sentinels were talking quietly; their guns clattered as they knocked against the projecting stones of the wall.
The traitor’s mother inquired:
“Your husband?”
“No.”
“Brother?”
“Son. My husband was killed thirteen days ago; this one to-day.”
And, rising, the mother of the dead man said humbly:
“The Madonna sees everything, she knows everything, and I thank her!”
“What for?” asked Marianna, and the other replied:
“Now that he has fallen with honour, fighting for his fatherland, I can say that he sometimes caused me anxiety: he was reckless, fond of pleasure, and I feared lest for that reason he might betray the town, as Marianna’s son has done, the enemy of God and men, the leader of our foes; accursed be he and accursed be the womb that bore him!”
Covering her face Marianna hurried away. The next day she went to the defenders of the town and said:
“Either kill me because my son has become your enemy, or open the gate for me, that I may go to him.”
They replied:
“You are a citizen, and the town should be dear to you; your son is just as much your enemy as he is ours.”
“I am his mother: I love him and deem it to be my fault that he is what he is.”
Then they consulted together as to what should be done and came to this decision:
“We cannot, in honour, kill you for your son’s sin; we know you could not have suggested this terrible sin to him; and we can guess how you must be suffering. You are not wanted by the town, even as a hostage; your son does not trouble himself about you; we think he has forgotten you, the fiend—and therein lies your punishment, if you think you have deserved it! To us it seems more terrible than death!”
“Yes,” she said; “it is more terrible.”
They opened the gate for her, and let her out of the town. For a long time they watched her from the wall as she made her way over this native soil, sodden now with blood shed by her son. She walked slowly, dragging her feet painfully through the mire, bowing her head before the corpses of the defenders of the town and repugnantly spurning the pieces of broken weapons that lay in her path—for mothers hate the instruments of destruction, believing only in that which preserves life.
She walked carefully, as though she carried under her cloak a bowl full of some liquid which she was afraid of spilling. And as she went on, as her figure grew smaller and smaller, it seemed to those who watched her from the wall that their former depression and hopelessness were disappearing with her.
They saw her stop when she had covered half the distance, and, throwing back her hood, gaze long at the town. Beyond, in the enemy’s camp, they had also noticed her advancing alone through the deserted fields; figures, as black as herself, cautiously approached her. They went up
to her, asked her who she was and whither she was going.
“Your leader is my son,” she said, and none of the soldiers doubted her words. They walked by her side, speaking in terms of praise of the bravery and cleverness of their leader. She listened to them, her head raised proudly in the air and showing not the least surprise. That was just how her son should be!
And now she stands before the man whom she knew nine months before his birth; before him whom she had never put out of her heart. And he stands before her, in silk and velvet, and wearing a sword ornamented with precious stones. In everything fit and seemly, exactly as she had seen him many a time in her dreams—rich, famous and beloved!
“Mother!” he said, kissing her hands. “You come to me; it means that you have understood me, and to-morrow I will capture this accursed town!”
“In which you were born,” she reminded him.
Intoxicated by his exploits, maddened by the desire for still greater glory, he spoke to her with the insolent pride of youth.
“I was born into the world and for the world, in order to strike it with astonishment! I spared this town for your sake—it is like a splinter in my foot and hinders me from advancing to fame as quickly as I could wish. But either to-day or tomorrow I will destroy the nest of these stubborn ones!”
“Where every stone knows you and remembers you as a child,” she said.
“Stones are dumb; if men cannot make them speak let mountains speak of me—that is what I want!”
“But the people?” she asked.
“O yes, I remember them, mother. I need them also, for only in the memories of people are heroes immortal.”
She replied:
“He is a hero who creates life, spiting death, who conquers death.”
“No,” he replied. “He who destroys becomes as famous as he who builds cities. For instance, we do not know whether Æneas or Romulus built Rome, but we know the name of Alaric and the other heroes who destroyed it.”
