The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Yes,” nodded the old man in spectacles. “Basilida, I imagine, must have looked like that.”

  “Basilida, the Byzantine?”

  “I picture her as a Slav woman.”

  “They are saying something about Lydia,” said the fat man.

  “What?” asked the lady. “No doubt some low jokes?”

  “About her eyes. They admire——”

  The lady made a grimace.

  The brasswork on the steamer glistened as, gently and rapidly, she neared the shore. The black walls of the pier came in sight and, beyond them, rising into the sky, a forest of masts. Here and there bright coloured flags hung motionless; dark smoke ascended and seemed to melt in the air; there was a smell of oil and coal dust; the noise of work proceeding in the harbour and the complex bourdon note of a large town reached the ear.

  The fat man suddenly burst out laughing.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the lady, half-closing her grey, faded eyes.

  “The Germans will smash them up, by Jove! You will see it!”

  “Why should you rejoice at that?”

  “Just so.”

  The man with the side-whiskers, examining the soles of his boots, asked the red-haired man, speaking deliberately and in a loud voice:

  “Were you satisfied with this surprise or not?”

  The red-haired man twisted his moustache fiercely, and made no reply.

  The steamer slowed down. The green water splashed against the white sides of the ship, as if in protest. It gave no reflection of the marble houses, the high towers and the azure terraces. The black jaws of the harbour opened, disclosing a thick scattering of ships.

  THE PROFESSOR

  The young man was ugly, and knew it. But he said to himself:

  “I am clever, am I not? I will become a sage. It is an easy matter here in Russia.”

  He began to read bulky works, for he was by no means stupid: he understood that the presence of wisdom can most easily be proved by quotations from books.

  Having read as many wise books as were necessary to make him short-sighted, he proudly held up his nose, which had become red from the weight of the spectacles, and declared to the world at large:

  “Well, you won’t deceive me. I see that life is a trap, put here for me by nature.”

  “And love?” asked the Spirit of Life.

  “No, I thank you. Praise be to God, I am not a poet. I will not enter the iron cage of inevitable duties for the sake of a piece of cheese.”

  But he was only moderately talented, and so he decided to take up the duties of a professor of philosophy.

  He went to the Minister of Popular Education and said to him:

  “Your Excellency, I can preach that life is meaningless, and that one should not submit to the dictates of nature.”

  The Minister considered a while whether that would do, then asked:

  “Should the orders of the authorities be obeyed?”

  “Most decidedly,” said the philosopher, reverently inclining his head, which the study of so many books had rendered bald. “Since human passions——”

  “Very well, you may have the chair. Your salary will be sixteen roubles a month. But should I require you to take into consideration the laws of nature, take care, have no opinions of your own. I shall not put up with that.”

  After thinking for some moments the Minister added, in a melancholy voice: “We live at a time when, for the sake of the unity of the state, it will perhaps be necessary to recognise that the laws of nature not only exist, but that they may to a certain extent prove useful.”

  “Just think of it!” exclaimed the philosopher to himself. “Even I may live to see it.” But aloud he said nothing.

  So he settled down to his work: every week he ascended the rostrum and spoke for an hour to curly-headed youths in this strain:

  “Gentlemen, man is limited from without, he is limited from within. Nature is antagonistic to him. Woman is a blind tool of Nature. All our life, therefore, is meaningless.”

  He had grown accustomed to think like this himself, and often in his enthusiasm he spoke eloquently and well. The young students were enthusiastic in their applause. He, pleased with himself, nodded his bald head and smiled at them kindly. His little nose shone, and everything went on smoothly.

  Dining at a restaurant disagreed with him—like all pessimists he suffered from indigestion—so he got married and ate his dinners at home for twenty-nine years. In between his work—he had not noticed how—he brought up four children. Then he died.

  Behind his coffin solemnly walked his three grief-stricken daughters with their young husbands, and his son, a poet, who was in love with all the beautiful women in the world. The students sang: “Eternal Memory.” They sang loudly and with animation, but badly. Over his grave his colleagues, the professors, made flowery speeches, referring to the well-ordered metaphysics of the departed; everything was done in correct style; it was solemn, and at times even touching.

  “Well, the old man is dead,” said a student to his comrades as they were leaving the cemetery.

  “He was a pessimist,” chimed in another.

  A third one asked:

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, a pessimist and a conservative.” “What, the bald-headed one was? I had not noticed it.”

  The fourth student was a poor man, and he inquired expectantly:

  “Shall we be invited to the obituary feast?”

  Yes, they had been invited.

  During his lifetime the deceased had written a number of excellent books, in which he proved, in glowing and beautiful language, the vanity of life. Needless to say, the books were bought and read with pleasure. Whatever may be said to the contrary, man likes what is beautiful.

  His family was well provided for—even pessimism can achieve that.

  The obituary feast was arranged on a large scale. The poor student had a good meal, such as he seldom had, and as he went home he thought, smiling good-humouredly:

  “Well, even pessimism is useful at times.”

  THE POET

  There was another case.

  A man, thinking himself a poet, wrote verse. But for some reason it was poor verse, and the circumstance disconcerted him.

  Walking in the street one day, he saw a whip lying in the road, lost by a cabman. An inspiration came to the poet, and the following image at once formed itself in his mind:—

  “In the road, in the dust, the snake lies,

  Like a whip in the dust of the road.

  In a swarm, like a cloud, come the flies,

  And the ants and their kind in a swarm.

  Thro’ the skin, like the links of a chain,

  Show the ribs—they show white thro’ the skin.

  O dead snake, thou remind’st me again

  Of my love, my dead love, O dead snake.”

  Suddenly the whip stood up on end and, swaying, said to him:

  “Why are you telling lies? You are a married man, you know how to read and write, yet you are telling lies. Your love has not died. You love your wife and you are afraid of her.”

  The poet became angry.

  “That is no business of yours.”

  “And the verses are poor.”

  “They are better than you could make. You can only crack, and even that you cannot do by yourself.”

  “But, anyhow, why do you tell lies? Your love did not die.”

  “All kinds of things happen—it was necessary it should.”

  “Oh, your wife will whip you. Take me to her.”

  “Oh, you may wait.”

  “Well, well, go your own way,” said the whip, curling itself up like a corkscrew; it lay down in the road and began to think of other people. The poet went to an inn, ordered a bottle of beer, and began
to think about himself.

  “Although the whip was decidedly rude, the verse is poor again, that’s true enough. How strange it is! One person always writes bad verse, while another sometimes succeeds in writing verse that is good. How badly everything is arranged in this world! What a stupid world it is!”

  So he sat and drank, trying to arrive at a clearer conception of the world. He came to the conclusion at last that it was necessary to speak the truth. This world is good for nothing, and it really disgusts a man to live in it. He thought about an hour and a half in this strain, and then he wrote:

  “For all their pleasant seeming, our desires

  A dread scourge are that drives us to our doom;

  Blindly we blunder thro’ the maze where waits us

  Death, the fell serpent, in the murky gloom.

  Oh! let us strangle our insensate longings!

  They do but lure us from the appointed way;

  Lead us thro’ thorns to our most bitter ruing,

  Leave us heartbroken in the twilight grey.

  And in the end full surely Death awaits us,

  Lives there the man but knows that he must die?”

  He wrote more in the same spirit—twenty-eight lines in all.

  “That’s good!” exclaimed the poet; and went home quite satisfied with himself.

  At home he read the lines to his wife. She liked them. She merely said:

  “There is something wrong with the first four lines.”

  “They will swallow it all right. Pushkin too began rather badly. But what do you think of the metre? It is that of a requiem.”

  Then he began to play with his little son: he put him on his knee and, tossing him up, sang in a poor tenor:

  “Tramp, tramp,

  On somebody’s bridge!

  When I grow rich

  I will pave my own bridge,

  And nobody else

  Shall walk over my bridge.”

  They spent the evening merrily, and the next morning the poet took his verses to an editor, who spoke in a profound manner (these editors are all profound—that is why their magazines are so dry)?

  “H’m!” said the editor, rubbing his nose. “You know, this is not altogether bad, and, what is more important, it is quite in the spirit of the times. Very much so. You seem to have discovered yourself. You must continue in the same strain. Sixteen copecks a line…four…forty-eight. I congratulate you.”

  The verses were printed, and the poet felt as if he had had another birthday. His wife kissed him fervently, and said dreamily:

  “Oh, my poet!”

  They had a great time. But a youth, a very good youth, who was earnestly seeking the meaning of life, read these verses and shot himself dead.

  He was quite convinced, you see, that, before denouncing life, the poet had sought the meaning as long as he himself had done, and that the search had been attended by sorrow, as in his own case. The youth did not know that these sombre thoughts were sold at the rate of sixteen copecks a line. He was an earnest youth.

  Let not the reader think I mean that even a whip can, at times, be used on people to their advantage.

  THE WRITER

  There once lived a very ambitious writer.

  When he was abused, it seemed to him that he was abused too much, and unjustly. When he was praised he thought that they neither praised him enough, nor wisely. He lived in a state of perpetual discontent, until the time came for him to die.

  The writer lay down on his bed and began grumbling:

  “That’s just how it is. What do you think of it? Two novels are not yet finished—and altogether I have enough material for ten years. The devil take this law of nature, and every other law. What nonsense! The novels might have turned out well. Why have they invented this idiotic compulsory service, as if things could not have been arranged differently? And it always comes at the wrong time: the novels are not finished yet.”

  He was angry, but disease was eating into his bones and whispering into his ears:

  “You trembled, eh? Why did you tremble? You don’t sleep at night, eh? Why don’t you sleep? You have drunk of sorrow, eh?—and of joy too?”

  He kept knitting his brows, but realised at last that nothing could be done. With a wave of the arm he dismissed the thought of his novels, and died.

  It was very disagreeable, but he died.

  So far so good. They washed him, dressed him according to custom, combed his hair and placed him on the table, straight and stiff like a soldier, heels together, toes apart. He lay very still, his nose drooped, and the only feeling he had was surprise.

  “How strange it is that I feel nothing at all! It’s the first time in my life. Ah, my wife is crying. Well, now you cry, but before, when anything went wrong, you flew into a rage. My little son is crying too. No doubt he will grow up a good-for-nothing fellow—the sons of writers, I have noticed, always do. No doubt that also is in accordance with some law of nature. What an infernal number of such laws there are.”

  So he lay and thought and thought, and wondered at his composure. He was not accustomed to it.

  They started for the cemetery, but as he was being borne along he suddenly felt there were not enough mourners.

  “No matter,” said he to himself, “though I may not be a very great writer, literature must be respected.”

  He looked out of the coffin and saw that, as a matter of fact, without counting his relations, only nine people accompanied him, among whom were two beggars and a lamplighter with a ladder over his shoulder.

  At this discovery he became quite indignant.

  “What swine!”

  The slight so incensed him that he immediately became resurrected, and, being a small man, jumped unperceived out of his coffin. He ran into a barber’s, had his moustache and beard shaved off, and borrowed a black coat with a patch under the armpit, leaving his own coat in its stead. Then he made his face look solemn and aggrieved, and became like a living man. It was impossible to recognise him.

  With the curiosity natural to his profession he asked the barber:

  “Are you not astonished at this strange incident?”

  The latter stroked his moustache condescendingly and replied:

  “Well, we live in Russia, and we are used to all kinds of things.”

  “But then I am a deceased person and suddenly I change my attire?”

  “It is the fashion of the times. And in what way are you a deceased person? Only externally! As far as the general run of people goes it would be better if God made them all like you. At the present time living people don’t look half so natural.”

  “Don’t I look rather yellowish?”

  “Quite in the spirit of the epoch, as you should be. It is Russia—everyone here suffers from one ill or another.”

  It is well known that barbers are flatterers of the first order and the most obliging people on earth.

  He bade him good-bye, and ran to overtake the coffin, moved by a keen desire to show for the last time his reverence for literature. He caught up with the procession and the number of those who accompanied the coffin became ten. The respect for the writer increased correspondingly. Passers-by exclaimed, astonished:

  “Just look! A writer’s funeral! Oh! Oh!”

  And people who knew what was taking place thought, with a sort of pride, as they went about their business:

  “It is plain that the importance of literature is being understood better and better by the country.”

  The writer was now following his own coffin as if he were an admirer of literature and a friend of the deceased. He addressed the lamplighter.

  “Did you know the deceased person?”

  “Certainly; I made use of him in a small way.”

  “I am very pleased to hear it.”

  “Yes; our work
is like that of the sparrow; where something drops we pick it up.”

  “How am I to understand that?”

  “Take it in a very simple manner, sir.”

  “In a simple manner?”

  “Yes, certainly. Of course, it is a sin if one looks at it from a certain point of view. One cannot, however, get on in this world without using ones wits.”

  “H’m! Are you sure of that?”

  “Quite sure, sir. There was a lamp right against his window, and every night he sat up till sunrise. Well, I did not light that lamp because enough light streamed from his window. So this one lamp was a net profit to me: he was a very useful man.”

  So, talking quietly to this one and that, the writer reached the cemetery, and it came to pass that he had to make a speech about himself, because all those who accompanied him on that day had toothache. This happened in Russia, and there people always have an ache of one sort or another.

  He made a rather good speech. One paper went so far as to praise it in the following terms:—

  “One of the followers, who from his appearance we judged to be an actor, made a warm and touching oration over the grave, albeit from our point of view he no doubt over-estimated and exaggerated the rather modest merits of the deceased. He was a writer of the old school who made no effort to rid himself of its defects—the naïve didactism, namely, and the over-insistence on the so-called civic duties—which to us nowadays have become so tiresome. Nevertheless, the speech was delivered with a feeling of unquestionable love for the written word.” When the speech had been duly made the writer lay down in the coffin and thought, quite satisfied with himself:

  “There, we are ready now. Everything has gone well and with dignity.”

  At this point he became quite dead. Thus should one’s calling be respected, even though it be literature.

  THE MAN WITH A NATIONAL FACE

  Once upon a time there was a gentleman who had lived more than half his life, when he suddenly felt that something was lacking in him. He was very much alarmed.

  He felt himself; everything seemed to be all right and in its place, his stomach was even protruding. He examined himself in a looking-glass, and saw that he had eyes, ears, and everything else that a serious man should have. He counted his fingers: there were ten right enough, and ten toes on his feet; but still he had an uncomfortable feeling that something was missing.