The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Let me look through them.”

  “They would not suit your eyes. They are for dark eyes, and yours are light,” he explained, and began to imitate the mistress scolding; but suddenly he stopped, and looked about the kitchen with an expression of fear.

  In a blacking tin lay many different kinds of buttons, and he explained to me with pride:

  “I picked up all these in the street. All by myself! I already have thirty-seven.”

  In the third box was a large brass pin, also found in the street; hobnails, worn-out, broken, and whole; buckles off shoes and slippers; brass door-handles, broken bone cane-heads; girls’ fancy combs, ‘The Dream Book and Oracle;’ and many other things of similar value.

  When I used to collect rags I could have picked up ten times as many such useless trifles in one month. Sascha’s things aroused in me a feeling of disillusion, of agitation, and painful pity for him. But he gazed at every single article with great attention, lovingly stroked them with his fingers, and stuck out his thick lips importantly. His protruding eyes rested on them affectionately and solicitously; but the spectacles made his childish face look comical.

  “Why have you kept these things?”

  He flashed a glance at me through the frame of the spectacles, and asked:

  “Would you like me to give you something?”

  “No; I don’t want anything.”

  He was obviously offended at the refusal and the poor impression his riches had made. He was silent a moment; then he suggested quietly:

  “Get a towel and wipe them all; they are covered with dust.”

  When the things were all dusted and replaced, he turned over in the bed, with his face to the wall. The rain was pouring down. It dripped from the roof, and the wind beat against the window. Without turning toward me, Sascha said:

  “You wait! When it is dry in the garden I will show you a thing—something to make you gasp.”

  I did not answer, as I was just dropping off to sleep.

  After a few seconds he started up, and began to scrape the wall with his hands. With quivering earnestness, he said:

  “I am afraid—Lord, I am afraid! Lord, have mercy upon me! What is it?”

  I was numbed by fear at this. I seemed to see the cook standing at the window which looked on the yard, with her back to me, her head bent, and her forehead pressed against the glass, just as she used to stand when she was alive, looking at a cock-fight. Sascha sobbed, and scraped on the wall. I made a great effort and crossed the kitchen, as if I were walking on hot coals, without daring to look around, and lay down beside him. At length, overcome by weariness, we both fell asleep.

  A few days after this there was a holiday. We were in the shop till midday, had dinner at home, and when the master had gone to sleep after dinner, Sascha said to me secretly:

  “Come along!”

  I guessed that I was about to see the thing which was to make me gasp. We went into the garden. On a narrow strip of ground between two houses stood ten old lime-trees, their stout trunks covered with green lichen, their black, naked branches sticking up lifelessly, and not one rook’s nest between them. They looked like monuments in a graveyard. There was nothing besides these trees in the garden; neither bushes nor grass. The earth on the pathway was trampled and black, and as hard as iron, and where the bare ground was visible under last year’s leaves it was also flattened, and as smooth as stagnant water.

  Sascha went to a corner of the fence which hid us from the street, stood under a lime-tree, and, rolling his eyes, glanced at the dirty windows of the neighboring house. Squatting on his haunches, he turned over a heap of leaves with his hands, disclosing a thick root, close to which were placed two bricks deeply embedded in the ground. He lifted these up, and beneath them appeared a piece of roof iron, and under this a square board. At length a large hole opened before my eyes, running under the root of the tree.

  Sascha lit a match and applied it to a small piece of wax candle, which he held over the hole as he said to me:

  “Look in, only don’t be frightened.”

  He seemed to be frightened himself. The piece of candle in his hand shook, and he had turned pale. His lips drooped unpleasantly, his eyes were moist, and he stealthily put his free hand behind his back. He infected me with his terror, and I glanced very cautiously into the depths under the root, which he had made into a vault, in the back of which he had lit three little tapers that filled the cave with a blue light. It was fairly broad, though in depth no more than the inside of a pail. But it was broad, and the sides were closely covered with pieces of broken glass and broken earthenware. In the center, on an elevation, covered with a piece of red cloth, stood a little coffin ornamented with silver paper, half covered with a fragment of material which looked like a brocaded pall. From beneath this was thrust out a little gray bird’s claw and the sharp-billed head of a sparrow. Behind the coffin rose a reading-stand, upon which lay a brass baptismal cross, and around which burned three wax tapers, fixed in candlesticks made out of gold and silver paper which had been wrapped round sweets.

  The thin flames bowed toward the entrance to the cave. The interior was faintly bright with many colored gleams and patches of light. The odor of wax, the warm smell of decay and soil, beat against my face, made my eyes smart, and conjured up a broken rainbow, which made a great display of color. All this aroused in me such an overwhelming astonishment that it dispelled my terror.

  “Is it good?”

  “What is it for?”

  “It is a chapel,” he explained. “Is it like one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And the sparrow is a dead person. Perhaps there will be relics of him, because he suffered undeservedly.”

  “Did you find him dead?”

  “No. He flew into the shed and I put my cap over him and smothered him.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I chose to.”

  He looked into my eyes and asked again:

  “Is it good?”

  “No.”

  Then he bent over the hole, quickly covered it with the board, pressed the bricks into the earth with the iron, stood up, and, brushing the dirt from his knees, asked sternly:

  “Why don’t you like it?”

  “I am sorry for the sparrow.”

  He stared at me with eyes which were perfectly stationary, like those of a blind person, and, striking my chest, cried:

  “Fool, it is because you are envious that you say that you do not like it! I suppose you think that the one in your garden in Kanatnoe Street was better done.”

  I remembered my summer-house, and said with conviction:

  “Certainly it was better.”

  Sascha pulled off his coat and threw it on the ground, and, turning up his sleeves, spat on his hands and said:

  “If that is so, we will fight about it.”

  I did not want to fight. My courage was undermined by depression; I felt uneasy as I looked at the wrathful face of my cousin. He made a rush at me, struck my chest with his head, and knocked me over. Then he sat astride of me and cried:

  “Is it to be life or death?”

  But I was stronger than he and very angry. In a few minutes he was lying face downward with his hands behind his head and a rattling in his throat. Alarmed, I tried to help him up, but he thrust me away with his hands and feet. I grew still more alarmed. I went away to one side, not knowing what else to do, and he raised his head and said:

  “Do you know what you have brought on yourself? I will work things so that when the master and mistress are not looking I shall have to complain of you, and then they will dismiss you.”

  He went on scolding and threatening me, and his words infuriated me. I rushed to the cave, took away the stones, and threw the coffin containing the sparrow over the fence into the street. I dug Out all the inside of
the cave and trampled it under my feet.

  Sascha took my violence strangely. Sitting on the ground, with his mouth partly covered and his eyebrows drawn together, he watched me, saying nothing. When I had finished, he stood up without any hurry, shook out his clothes, threw on his coat, and then said calmly and ominously:

  “Now you will see what will happen; just wait a little! I arranged all this for you purposely; it is witchcraft. Aha!”

  I sank down as if his words had physically hurt me, and I felt quite cold inside. But he went away without glancing back at me, which accentuated his calmness still more. I made up my mind to run away from the town the next day, to run away from my master, from Sascha with his witchcraft, from the whole of that worthless, foolish life.

  The next morning the new cook cried out when she called me:

  “Good gracious! what have you been doing to your face?”

  “The witchcraft is beginning to take effect,” I thought, with a sinking heart.

  But the cook laughed so heartily that I also smiled involuntarily, and peeped into her glass. My face was thickly smeared with soot.

  “Sascha did this?” I asked.

  “Or I,” laughed the cook.

  When I began to clean the boots, the first boot into which I put my hand had a pin in the lining, which ran into my finger.

  “This is his witchcraft!”

  There were pins or needles in all the boots, put in so skilfully that they always pricked my palm. Then I took a bowl of cold water, and with great pleasure poured it over the head of the wizard, who was either not awake or was pretending to sleep.

  But all the same I was miserable. I was always thinking of the coffin containing the sparrow, with its gray crooked claws and its waxen bill pathetically sticking upward, and all around the colored gleams which seemed to be trying unsuccessfully to form themselves into a rainbow. In my imagination the coffin was enlarged, the claws of the bird grew, stretched upward quivering, were alive.

  I made up my mind to run away that evening, but in warming up some food on an oil-stove before dinner I absent-mindedly let it catch fire. When I was trying to put the flames out, I upset the contents of the vessel over my hand, and had to be taken to the hospital. I remember well that oppressive nightmare of the hospital. In what seemed to be a yellow-gray wilderness there were huddled together, grumbling and groaning, gray and white figures in shrouds, while a tall man on crutches, with eyebrows like whiskers, pulled his black beard and roared:

  “I will report it to his Eminence!”

  The pallet beds reminded me of the coffin, and the patients, lying with their noses upward, were like dead sparrows. The yellow walls rocked, the ceiling curved outward like a sail, the floor rose and fell beside my cot. Everything about the place was hopeless and miserable, and the twigs of trees tapped against the window like rods in some one’s hand.

  At the door there danced a red-haired, thin dead person, drawing his shroud round him with his thin hands and squeaking:

  “I don’t want mad people.”

  The man on crutches shouted in his ear:

  “I shall report it to his Eminence!”

  Grandfather, grandmother, and every one had told me that they always starved people in hospitals, so I looked upon my life as finished. A woman with glasses, also in a shroud, came to me, and wrote something on a slate hanging at the head of the bed. The chalk broke and fell all over me.

  “What is your name?”

  “I have no name.”

  “But you must have one.”

  “No.”

  “Now, don’t be silly, or you will be whipped.”

  I could well believe that they would whip me; that was why I would not answer her. She made a hissing sound like a cat, and went out noiselessly, also like a cat.

  Two lamps were lit. The yellow globes hung down from the ceiling like two eyes, hanging and winking, dazzled, and trying to get closer together.

  Some one in the corner said:

  “How can I play without a hand?”

  “Ah, of course; they have cut off your hand.”

  I came to the conclusion at once that they cut off a man’s hand because he played at cards! What would they do with me before they starved me?

  My hands burned and smarted just as if some one were pulling the bones out of them. I cried softly from fright and pain, and shut my eyes so that the tears should not be seen; but they forced their way through my eyelids, and, trickling over my temples, fell into my ears.

  The night came. All the inmates threw themselves upon their pallet beds, and hid themselves under gray blankets. Every minute it became quieter. Only some one could be heard muttering in a comer, “It is no use; both he and she are rotters.”

  I would have written a letter to grandmother, telling her to come and steal me from the hospital while I was still alive, but I could not write; my hands could not be used at all. I would try to find a way of getting out of the place.

  The silence of the night became more intense every moment, as if it were going to last forever. Softly putting my feet to the floor, I went to the double door, half of which was open. In the corridor, under the lamp, on a wooden bench with a back to it, appeared a gray, bristling head surrounded by smoke, looking at me with dark, hollow eyes. I had no time to hide myself.

  “Who is that wandering about? Come here!”

  The voice was not formidable; it was soft. I went to him. I saw a round face with short hair sticking out round it. On the head the hair was long and stuck out in all directions like a silver halo, and at the belt of this person hung a bunch of keys. If his beard and hair had been longer, he would have looked like the Apostle Peter.

  “You are the one with the burned hands? Why are you wandering about at night? By whose authority?”

  He blew a lot of smoke at my chest and face, and, putting his warm hands on my neck, drew me to him.

  “Are you frightened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every one is frightened when they come here first, but that is nothing. And you need not be afraid of me, of all people. I never hurt any one. Would you like to smoke? No, don’t! It is too soon; wait a year or two. And where are your parents? You have none? Ah, well, you don’t need them; you will be able to get along without them. Only you must not be afraid, do you see?”

  It was a long time since I had come across any one who spoke to me simply and kindly in language that I could understand, and it was inexpressibly pleasant to me to listen to him. When he took me back to my cot I asked him:

  “Come and sit beside me.”

  “All right,” he agreed.

  “Who are you?”

  “I? I am a soldier, a real soldier, a Cossack. And I have been in the wars—well, of course I have! Soldiers live for war. I have fought with the Hungarians, with the Circassians, and the Poles, as many as you like. War, my boy, is a great profession.”

  I closed my eyes for a minute, and when I opened them, there, in the place of the soldier, sat grandmother, in a dark frock, and he was standing by her. She was saying:

  “Dear me! So they are all dead?”

  The sun was playing in the room, now gilding every object, then hiding, and then looking radiantly upon us all again, just like a child frolicking.

  Babushka bent over me and asked:

  “What is it, my darling? They have been mutilating you? I told that old red devil—”

  “I will make all the necessary arrangements,” said the soldier, going away, and grandmother, wiping the tears from her face, said:

  “Our soldier, it seems, comes from Balakhna.”

  I still thought that I must be dreaming, and kept silence. The doctor came, bandaged my burns, and, behold! I was sitting with grandmother in a cab, and driving through the streets of the town. She told me:

  “That grandfather of our
s he is going quite out of his mind, and he is so greedy that it is sickening to look at him. Not long ago he took a hundred rubles out of the office-book of Xlist the furrier, a new friend of his. What a set-out there was! E-h-h-h!”

  The sun shone brightly, and clouds floated in the sky like white birds. We went by the bridge across the Volga. The ice groaned under us, water was visible under the planks of the bridge, and the golden cross gleamed over the red dome of the cathedral in the market-place.

  We met a woman with a broad face. She was carrying an armful of willow-branches. The spring was coming; soon it would be Easter.

  “I love you very much, Grandmother!”

  This did not seem to surprise her. She answered in a calm voice:

  “That is because we are of the same family. But—and I do not say it boastfully—there are others who love me, too, thanks to thee, O Blessed Lady!” She added, smiling:

  “She will soon be rejoicing; her Son will rise again! Ah, Variusha, my daughter!”

  Then she was silent.

  CHAPTER II

  Grandfather met me in the yard; he was on his knees, chopping a wedge with a hatchet. He raised the ax as if he were going to throw it at my head, and then took off his cap, saying mockingly: “How do you do, your Holiness? Your Highness? Have you finished your term of serviced Well, now you can live as you like, yes. U-ugh! you—”

  “We know all about it, we know all about it!” said grandmother, hastily waving him away, and when she went into her room to get the samovar ready she told me:

  “Grandfather is fairly ruined now. What money there was he lent at interest to his godson Nikolai, but he never got a receipt for it. I don’t quite know yet how they stand, but he is ruined; the money is lost. And all this because we have not helped the poor or had compassion on the unfortunate. God has said to Himself, ‘Why should I do good to the Kashirins?’ and so He has taken everything from us.” Looking round, she went on:

  “I have been trying to soften the heart of the Lord toward us a little, so that He may not press too hardly on the old man, and I have begun to give a little in charity, secretly and at night, from what I have earned. You can come with me to-day if you like. I have some money—”