The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  On the ground, on carpets that could not be matched, were three hundred golden pitchers of wine and everything needed for the royal banquet. Behind Timur stood the musicians; at his feet were his kindred: kings and princes and the commanders of his troops; by his side was no one. Nearest of all to him was the tipsy poet Kermani, he who once to the question of the destroyer of the world, “Kermani, how much would you give for me if I were to be sold?” replied to the sower of death and terror:

  “Twenty-five askers.”

  “But that is the value of my belt alone!” exclaimed Timur, surprised.

  “I was only thinking of the belt,” replied Kermani, “only of the belt; because you yourself are not worth a farthing!”

  Thus spake the poet Kermani to the King of Kings, to the man of evil and terror. Let us therefore value the fame of the poet, the friend of truth, always higher than the fame of Timur. Let us praise poets who have only one God—the beautifully spoken, fearless word of truth—that which is their god for ever!

  It was an hour of mirth, carousal and proud reminiscences of battles and victories. Amid the sounds of music and popular games, warriors were fencing before the tent of the king, and endeavouring to show their prowess in killing. A number of motley-coloured clowns were tumbling about, strong men were wrestling, acrobats were performing as though they had no bones in their bodies. A performance of elephants was also in progress; they were painted red and green, which made some of them look ludicrous, others terrible. At this hour of joy, when Timur’s men were intoxicated with fear before him, with pride in his fame, with the fatigue of battles, with wine and koumiss—at this mad hour, suddenly through the noise, like lightning through a cloud, the cry of a woman reached the ears of the conqueror of the Sultan Bayazet, the cry of a proud eagle, a sound familiar and attuned to his afflicted soul—afflicted by Death, and therefore so cruel to mankind and to life.

  He gave orders to inquire who had cried out in this voice devoid of joy. He was told that a woman had come, all in rags and covered with dust; she seemed crazy, and speaking Arabic demanded—she demanded—to see the master of three parts of the world.

  “Lead her in!” said the king.

  Before him stood a woman, barefooted, in rags faded by the sun. Her black hair hung loose, covering her naked breast, and her face was of the colour of bronze. Her eyes expressed command and her tawny hand did not shake as she pointed it at the “Lame One.”

  “Are you he that defeated Sultan Bayazet?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am he. I have conquered many and am not yet tired of victories. What have you to tell me about yourself, woman?”

  “Listen,” she said. “Whatever you may have done, you are only a man, but I am a mother. You serve Death—I serve Life. You are guilty before me and I am come to demand that you atone for your guilt. They tell me that your watchword is ‘Justice is Power.’ I do not believe it, but you must be just to me because I am a mother.”

  The king was wise enough to overlook the insult and felt the force of the words behind it. He said:

  “Sit down and speak. I will listen to you.”

  She settled herself comfortably on a carpet in the narrow circle of kings and related as follows:—

  “I have come from near Salerno. It is in far-off Italy—you would not know it. My father was a fisherman, my husband also; he was as handsome as he was happy. It was I who made him happy. I also had a son who was the finest boy in the world——”

  “Like my Jihangir,” said the old warrior quietly.

  “My son was the finest and cleverest boy. He was six years old when Saracen pirates came to our shore. They killed my father and my husband, and many others. They kidnapped my son and for four years I have searched for him all over the earth. He must be with you now; I know it, because Bayazet’s warriors captured the pirates; you defeated Bayazet and took away all he had; therefore you must know where my son is, you must give him back to me!”

  “She is insane,” said the kings and friends of Timur, his princes and marshals; and they all laughed, for kings always account themselves wise.

  But Kermani looked seriously at the woman, and Tamerlane seemed greatly astonished.

  “She is as insane as a mother,” quietly said the poet Kermani; but the king—the enemy of the world—replied:

  “Woman, how came you from that unknown country, across the seas, across rivers and mountains, through the forests? How is it that wild beasts, and men, who are often more ferocious than the wildest of beasts, did not harm you? You came even without a weapon, the only friend of the defenceless that does not betray them as long as they have strength in their arms. I must know it all in order that I may believe you and in order that my astonishment may not prevent me from understanding you.”

  Let us praise Woman-Mother, whose love knows no bounds, by whose breast the whole world has been nourished. Everything that is beautiful in man comes from the rays of the sun and from mother’s milk; these are the sources of our love of life.

  The woman replied to Timur-Lenk:

  “I came across one sea only, a sea with many islands, where I found fishermen’s boats. When one is seeking what one loves the wind is always favourable. For one who has been born and bred by the seashore it is easy to swim across rivers. Mountains? I saw no mountains.”

  “A mountain becomes a valley when one loves!” interjected smilingly the poet Kermani.

  “True, there were forests on the way. There were wild boars, bears, lynxes and terrible-looking bulls that lowered their heads threateningly; twice lynxes stared at me with eyes like yours. But every beast has a heart. I talked to them as I talk to you. They believed me that I was a mother and went away sighing. They pitied me. Know you not that beasts also love their young, and will fight for the life and freedom of those they love as valiantly as men?”

  “That is true, woman,” said Timur. “Very often, I know, their love is stronger and they fight harder than men.”

  “Men,” she continued like a child, for every mother is a hundred times a child in her soul, “men are always children of their mothers, for everyone has a mother, everyone is somebody’s son, even you, old man; a woman bore you. You may renounce God, but that you cannot renounce, old man.”

  “That is true, woman,” exclaimed Kermani, the fearless poet. “You can have no calves from a herd of bulls, no flowers bloom without the sun, there is no happiness without love. There is no love without woman. There is no poet or hero without a mother.”

  And the woman said:

  “Give me back my child, because I am a mother and I love him!”

  Let us bow down before Woman—she gave birth to Moses, Mahomet, and the Great Prophet Jesus who was murdered by the wicked, but who, as Sherif-eddin said, “will rise and come to judge the living and the dead. It will happen in Damascus.”

  Let us bow down before her who through the centuries gives birth to great men. Aristotle was her son, and Firdousi, and honey-sweet Saadi, and Omar Khayyam that is like wine mixed with poison, Iscander and blind Homer. All these are her children, they all have drunk her milk and every one of them was led into the world by her hand—when they were no taller than a tulip. All the pride of the world is due to mothers.

  And the grey destroyer of towns, the lame tiger Timur-Gurgan, grew thoughtful and for a long time was silent. Then to all present he said:

  “Men Tangri Kuli, Timur (I, Timur, a servant of God) say what I must say. I have lived for many years and the earth groans under me. For thirty years, with this hand of mine, I have been destroying the harvest of Death, I have been taking revenge upon Death because Death put out the sun of my heart—robbed me of my Jihangir. Others have struggled for cities and for kingdoms, but none has so striven for a man. Men had no value in my eyes; I cared not who they were nor why they were in my way. It was I, Timur, who said to Bayazet when I had defeated him: ‘O Bayazet, it seems tha
t kingdoms are nothing before God; you see that He gives them into the hands of people like us—you who are a cripple and me who am lame!’ I said this to him when he was led up to me in chains, groaning under their weight. I looked upon his misfortune and felt that love was bitter as wormwood, the weed that grows on ruins.

  “A servant of God, I say what I must. A woman sits before me, her number is legion and she has awakened in my soul feelings hitherto unknown to me. As an equal she speaks to me and she does not ask, she demands. I see and understand why this woman is so powerful: she loves and love helped her to recognise that her child is the spark of life from which a flame may spring that will burn for many centuries. Have not all prophets been children, and all heroes been weak? O Jihangir, the light of my eyes, perhaps it was thy lot to warm the earth, to sow happiness on it: I have covered it well with blood and made it fertile.”

  Again the Scourge of Nations pondered long. At last he said:

  “I, Timur, slave of God, say what I must. Let three hundred horsemen go to all the four corners of my kingdom and let them find this woman’s son. She shall wait here and I will wait with her. Happy shall he be who returns with the child on his saddle. Woman, is that right?”

  She tossed her black hair from her face, smiled at him and, nodding, answered:

  “Quite right, O king!”

  Then the terrible old man rose and bowed to her in silence, but the merry poet Kermani sang joyfully like a child:

  “What is more delightful than a song of flowers and stars?

  Everyone will say: a song of love.

  What is more enchanting than the midday sun in May?

  A lover will reply: she whom I love.

  Ah, I know the stars are splendid in the sky at depth of night,

  And I know the sun is gorgeous on a dazzling summer’s day,

  But the eyes of my beloved out-rival all the flowers,

  And her smile is more entrancing than the sun in May.

  But no one yet has sung the best, most charming song of all;

  Tis the song of all beginnings, of the heart of all the world,

  Of the magic heart of women, and the mother of us all!”

  Timur-Lenk said to his poet:

  “Quite right, Kermani! God did not err when He selected your lips to announce his wisdom!”

  “Well, God himself is a good poet!” said the drunken Kermani.

  And the woman smiled, and all the kings and princes and warriors smiled too, like children, as they looked at her—the Woman-Mother.

  All this is true. What is said here is the truth, all mothers know it, ask them and they will say:

  “Yes, all this is everlasting truth. We are more powerful than Death, we who ceaselessly present sages, poets and heroes to the world, we who sow in it everything that is glorious!”

  A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA

  It is as if thousands of metallic wires were strung in the thick foliage of the olive-trees. The wind moves the stiff, hard leaves, they touch the strings, and these light, continuous contacts fill the air with a hot, intoxicating sound. It is not yet music, but a sound as if unseen hands were tuning hundreds of invisible harps, and one awaits impatiently the moment of silence before a powerful hymn bursts forth, a hymn to the sun, the sky and the sea, played on numberless stringed instruments.

  The wind sways the tops of the trees, which seem to be moving down the mountain slope towards the sea. The waves beat in a measured, muffled way against the stones on the shore. The sea is covered with moving white spots, as if numberless flocks of birds had settled on its blue expanse; they all swim in the same direction, disappear, diving into the depths, and reappear, giving forth a faint sound. On the horizon, looking like grey birds, move two ships under full sail, dragging the other birds in their train. All this reminds one of a half-forgotten dream seen long ago; it is so unlike reality.

  “The wind will freshen towards evening,” says an old fisherman, sitting on a little mound of jingling pebbles in the shade of the rocks.

  The breakers have washed up on to the stones a tangle of smelling seaweed—brown and golden and green; the wrack withers in the sun and on the hot stones, the salt air is saturated with the penetrating odour of iodine. One after another the curling breakers beat upon the heap of shingle.

  The old fisherman resembles a bird: he has a small pinched face and an aquiline nose; his eyes, which are almost hidden in the folds of the skin, are small and round, though probably keen enough. His fingers are like crooks, bony and stiff.

  “Half-a-century ago, signor,” said the old man, in a tone that was in harmony with the beating of the waves and the chirping of the crickets—it was just such another day as this, gladsome and noisy, with everything laughing and singing. My father was forty, I was sixteen, and in love of course—it is inevitable when one is sixteen and the sun is bright.

  “‘Let us go, Guido, and catch some pezzoni,’ said my father to me. Pezzoni, signor, are very thin and tasty fish with pink fins; they are also called coral fish because they live at a great depth where coral is found. To catch them one has to cast anchor, and angle with a hook attached to a heavy weight. It is a pretty fish.

  “And we set off, looking forward to naught but a good catch. My father was a strong man, an experienced fisherman, but just then he had been ailing, his chest hurt him, and his fingers were contracted with rheumatism—he had worked on a cold winter’s day and caught the fisherman’s complaint.

  “The wind here is very tricky and mischievous, the kind of wind that sometimes breathes on you from the shore as if gently pushing you into the sea; and at another time will creep up to you unawares and then rush at you as if you had offended it. The boat breaks loose and flies before it, sometimes with keel uppermost, with you yourself in the water. All this happens in a moment, you have no chance either to curse or to mention God’s name, as you are whirled and driven far out to sea. A highwayman is more honourable than this kind of wind. But then, signor, human beings are always more honourable than elemental forces.

  “Yes, this wind pounced upon us when we were three miles from the shore—quite close, you see, but it struck us as unexpectedly as a coward or a scoundrel. ‘Guido,’ said my father, clutching at the oars with his crippled hands. ‘Hold on, Guido! Be quick—weigh anchor!’

  “While I was weighing the anchor my father was struck in the chest by one of the oars and fell stunned into the bottom of the boat. I had no time to help him, signor; every second we might capsize. Events moved quickly: when I got hold of the oars, we were rushing along rapidly, surrounded by the dust-like spray of the water; the wind picked off the tops of the waves and sprinkled us like a priest, only with more zest, signor, and without any desire to wash away our sins.

  “‘This is a bad look-out!’ said my father when he came to, and had taken a look in the direction of the shore. ‘It will soon be all over, my son.’

  “When one is young one does not readily believe in danger; I tried to row, did all that one can do on the water in such a moment of danger, when the wind, like the breath of wicked devils, amiably digs thousands of graves for you and sings the requiems for nothing.

  “‘Sit still, Guido,’ said my father, grinning and shaking the water off his head. ‘What is the use of poking the sea with match-sticks? Save your strength, my son; otherwise they will wait in vain for you at home.’

  “The green waves toss out little boat as children toss a ball, peer at us over the boat’s sides, rise above our heads, roar, shake, drop us into deep pits. We rise again on the white crests, but the coast runs farther and farther away from us and seems to dance like our boat. Then my father said to me:

  “‘Maybe you will return to land, but I—never. Listen and I will tell you something about a fisherman’s work.’

  “And he began to tell me all he knew of the habits of the different kinds of fishes: where, when and how
best to catch them.

  “‘Should we not rather pray, father?’ I asked him when I realised that our plight was desperate; we were like a couple of rabbits amidst a pack of white hounds which grinned at us on all sides.

  “‘God sees everything,’ he said. ‘If he sees everything He knows that men who were created for the land are now perishing in the sea, and that one of them, hoping to be saved, wishes to tell Him what he, the Father, already knows. It is not prayer but work that the earth and the people need. God understands that.’

  “And having told me everything he knew about work my father began to talk about how one should live with others.

  “‘Is this the proper time to teach me?’ said I. ‘You did not do it when we were on shore.’

  “‘On shore I did not feel the proximity of death so.’

  “The wind howled like a wild beast and furiously lashed the waves; my father had to shout to make me hear.

  “‘Always act as if there lived no one better and no one worse than yourself—that will always be right! A landowner and a fisherman, a priest and a soldier, belong to one body; you are needed just as much as any other of its members. Never approach a man with the idea that there is more bad in him than good; get to think that the good outweighs the bad and it will be so. People give what is asked of them.’”

  “These things were not said all at once, of course, but intermittently, like words of command. We were tossed from wave to wave, and the words came to me sometimes from below, sometimes from above through the spray. Much of what he said was carried off before it reached my ear, much I could not understand: is it a time to learn, signor, when every minute you are threatened with death! I was in great fear; it was the first time that I had seen the sea in such a rage, and I felt utterly helpless. The sensation is still vivid in my memory, but I cannot tell whether I experienced it then or afterwards when I recalled those hours.

  “As if it were now I see my father: he sits at the bottom of the boat, his feeble arms outstretched, his hands gripping the sides of the boat; his hat has been washed away; from right and left, from fore and aft, the waves are breaking over his head and shoulders.… He shook his head, sniffed and shouted to me from time to time. He was wet through and looked very small, and fear, or perhaps it was pain, had made his eyes large. I think it was pain.